Netflix's The Great Hack Brings Our Data Nightmare to Life
If you’d rather not think about how your life is locked in a dystopian web of your own data, don't watch the new Netflix documentary The Great Hack.
But if you want to see, really see the way data tracking, harvesting, and targeting takes the strands of information we generate and ties them around us until we are smothered by governments and companies, then don't miss the film, which premieres today on the streaming platform and in theaters. Ostensibly, it tells the story of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but even if you know that sordid tale already, the film is worth a look. It uses the scandal as a framework to illustrate the data mining structures and algorithms that are undermining individual liberty and democratic society, one Facebook like and meme at a time.
"We became obsessed with trying to bring the POV of the algorithm to life," explains codirector Karim Amer, who made the film with Jehane Noujaim, of the visual language the team developed for the doc. "How does the algorithm see us? If we could create a perspective for that algorithm, then we could help people understand our own fragility and the superstructure that exists around us, and how it's constantly sucking and collecting your behavior."
