Oh The Hypocritical Irony

A documentary that begins by giving us a glimpse into the scary world of data collection and then how it is used in targeted advertising, news and political campaigning.

The story then takes a very sharp turn and focuses on Cambridge Analytica, a company which many of us will have heard of in the news from the Facebook scandal, and also the people involved. As compelling as the writers want this story to be, they come off very one sided with framing Brexit and the Trump campaign as the villains of this tale who have unscrupulously swayed unwitting people to do things they may not otherwise do. It almost like if someone knew some personal information about you, they are now able to manipulate your decisions of who to vote for and you are powerless to make an individual decision. The film would have you believe that data rights are no different to human rights. I believe this to be true, when we are talking about electronic banking data etc. But when it comes to publicly posting on social media platforms, where ethics are a bit slippery, I think these rights get lost in the term and conditions.

What I take issue with is the perspective of the writers, that the other political side is somehow the result of evil winning. They seem to be very upset with the results of both Brexit and the 2016 US elections, and now want to assign blame to unethical campaigning, when it was all done very legally, and by both sides. They conveniently leave out that the Hillary campaign utilized social media to try and influence the 2016 election as well. The big difference here was that the DNC had the help of the entire mainstream news behind them as well as the tech giants, who was the source of the all this data that Cambridge Analytica used. This documentary does nothing more than push a political narrative, ironically doing exactly that which it claims to be against.

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"They took your data. Then they took control. The Great Hack uncovers the dark world of data exploitation through the compelling personal journeys of players on different sides of the explosive Cambridge Analytica/Facebook data scandal." - Netflix

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"While beautifully produced and engaging, it's a bit one-sided in its coverage of data rights. Watching this you would assume that the Trump Campaign and Republicans were the only ones to use social media data analytics to target their marketing. The truth is that both campaigns utilized social media to try and influence the 2016 election. And in the 2012 election, the Obama campaign was the first to effectively manipulate social media. Social media manipulation is no different than muckraking in the 1920's. While I do believe we have lost our right to privacy in the U.S. and need privacy rights reform, this documentary was primarily lamenting the fact that the film makers were unhappy with the 2016 election outcome. Had the Clinton campaign using Clarity Campaign Labs or Tech For Campaigns won instead of Trump, this would be a non-issue." - Robert B

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The Great Hack gets a rating of 3/10

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