THE GREAT HACK
The movie “The Great Hack” was directed by Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim revolves around
the idea of propaganda, the free will of individuals, and the power of personal data in a digital
age. The movie starts with a scene of a classroom of David Carroll who asks his students if they
ever think their phone’s microphone listens to their talks because they get personalized ads on
apps they use. Everyone says yes. Carroll tells them why. He explains how this target works for
every person. He says that
“We are so in love with the gift of free
connectivity that no one bothered to read the
terms and conditions.”
The Great Hack concerns itself with the presidential elections of US 2016 in which Trump won
and the Brexit vote. It explains how the leaders used the company Cambridge Analytica services
to propaganda against the opposition and change the views of voters. As Brittany Kaiser (former
director for business development for Cambridge Analytica) said:
“We bombarded them through blogs,
websites, articles, videos, ads, every platform
you can imagine until they saw the world the
way we wanted them to until they voted for
are candidate.”
In the movie, people who have already worked at Cambridge Analytica highlight how the
company collects and uses data. It highlights the project Alamo run by Cambridge Analytica on
which the company spent daily $1M. The company collects the data through surveys, personal
likes and dislikes, and engagements on online apps. It contains 5000 data points for each
American. By collecting the data, they provide personalized information to every individual.
Brittany Kaiser tells the company to target only those individuals they call “persuadable” to
whom they feed personalized content to trigger them. Carole Cadwalladr (investigative journalist
for The Guradian) highlights the working and network of Cambridge Analytica which was used
to persuade people to vote for Brexit. She said that Brexit was a petri dish for Trump. David
Carroll had filed a legal lawsuit against Cambridge Analytica and SCL group (parent company of
Cambridge Analytica) to provide his data that was collected with his consent.
This movie demonstrates very disturbing insights about the digital age. People feel that having
technology, the internet provides them with freedom of all sorts but they are not aware that they
can manipulated more with these tools. Life is so fast an people are so careless that they post
every aspect of their lives and do not bother to read any terms and conditions, Julian Wheatland
(COO of Cambridge Analytica) says that people are so open to fill any sort of survey.
In an advanced and democratic world. People think that they are masters of their own will but
they are not aware that they're manipulated in such a way that unconsciously they do things that
is not the voice of their inner self. Today, people are molded as per their will by collecting their
data as Brittany Kaiser says “Data is the most valuable asset on earth.” It is a new type of war.
In this age, war is not fought physically but psychologically. This documentary only explains the
role of one company in two events but it is unknown how many companies in the world are
working to manipulate people. In the long run, data can be used to manipulate the population of
other countries and this is the real war without any loss of life.
