The Great Hack takes a hard look at social media
Last year, in the film Sorry to Bother You, a character states: “If you show a person a problem and they have no idea how to control it, they just learn to ignore it.” In the wake of two different mass shootings within forty-eight hours, I can’t get this idea out of my head.
We can’t seem to grasp the gravity of these events, their causes, their solutions, or their impact on the psyche of the nation. Every time this happens, people retreat into their respective corners, shout the same talking points, and eventually forget about it for a time.
I know where I am on the issue. I know how my ideas are perceived. I know bringing them up in mixed company brings about alienation. So I try to leave it alone. I’m not convincing anyone of anything.
The world is filling up with problems that are too big to face, too polarizing to discuss, too terrifying to consider. Climate change. White privilege. Social media. That last one didn’t seem scary when it first became popular.
Facebook was a place to learn about your friends, find a few new ones, and share pictures of your vacation. It’s still those things, but over the past fifteen years, it has also turned into something much more insidious. Our constant connection has opened a Pandora’s box of influence that has the power to subjugate democracies around the globe.
The Great Hack, a new documentary film on Netflix, is an examination of just one scandal that shows the very real danger behind our constant connection to each other.
It’s no secret that data is the most profitable part of the internet economy. Every person in the world, assuming they are connected to Facebook or Google or Twitter, has an inherent value to advertising companies.
Our preferences and clicks and information, which are given away freely, allow advertisers to tailor campaigns specific to our tastes and convince us to buy certain products.
It seems harmless—we’ve been advertised to all our lives, and we’ve learned to ignore a lot of it. But there’s a sinister side to all this data collection, as revealed by the Cambridge Analytica scandal in the U.K.
The Great Hack follows three people as they explore the very dangerous issues surrounding privacy: David Carroll, a professor on a quest to reclaim his data from companies like Cambridge Analytica, Carole Cadwalladr, the reporter for The Observer who broke the story about the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal, and Brittany Kaiser, a whistleblower and former American executive at Cambridge Analytica who had access to the upper echelons of the company and worked for some of their most notorious clients, including the 2016 Trump campaign.
The findings of the documentary are far too complex to get into here. Cambridge Analytica had their fingers in dozens upon dozens of political campaigns around the world.
From Malaysia to the United States, the company had the capability of targeting political ads to specific individuals, those that are identified as able to be influenced, and bombarding them with specific emotional messaging that might cause them to support one side in a tight race.
The company went so far as to create what appeared to be an organic, grassroots campaign aimed at Malaysian youth to discourage them from voting. It worked. As I mentioned, the company was linked to the 2016 Trump campaign. It was linked to the Leave campaign for the Brexit vote. Several of these techniques are revealed through actual recordings of Cambridge Analytica executives as they try to sell their company to new clients.
Brittany Kaiser, the whistleblower in the film, testifies under oath that the technology used is classified as “weapons grade” communications that was unleashed on the general public.
And yet, not much has been made of Cambridge Analytica and their exploits here in the states. We’ve focused so heavily on the Russian manipulation of our elections that we’ve ignored other kinds, kinds that are just as concerning. Carole Cadwalladr even warns that if we don’t do something about Cambridge Analytica and companies like them, it’s possible that we will never had free and fair elections again.
It’s the very type of problem that seems too big to control. It’s not one that we can risk ignoring. Everyone should watch The Great Hack. Not enough will.