The Great Hack(2019)
dir. Karim Amer & Jehane Noujaim
How your data became a political weapon.
Where to watch: Netflix (FlixPatrol US listing; verify before adding)Letterboxd ↗
The film follows the Cambridge Analytica scandal through three people: David Carroll, a professor suing to get his own data back; Brittany Kaiser, a former company insider; and Carole Cadwalladr, the reporter who broke the story. It lays out how a political consultancy used Facebook data to build voter profiles and target them with tailored messages.
Why it’s here
The film makes data harvesting feel like something done to you personally, and shows how profiling was turned into political persuasion. What's punk is Carroll's lawsuit and Cadwalladr's reporting. What's pedagogical is the explanation of what data-brokering is. Note: it frames Kaiser as a conscience-stricken whistleblower, which is arguable, and the real impact of the targeting is still debated. Pairs with Your Face Belongs to Us, Data and Goliath and Citizenfour.
Where This Film Lives
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