Netflix release the documentary named “The Great Hack” on 24th of July, 2019. If you go with the flow, you learn how the propaganda and manipulative digital works is trying to alter your opinion about elections mostly.
However, if we pull ourselves back and think about it all, connecting the information that we have from other sources too, the meaning gets bit different.
Focus of The Great Hack documentary
The main focus of the documentary is the Cambridge Analytica firm, which was accused of being a source of manipulation in many elections and votings, including Trump elections, Brixit referendum, elections in various other countries.
It carries the narrative pretty nicely and with a nice flow. Includes interviews from the ex-employees of the firm too like Brittany Kaiser.
Problems in The Great Hack documentary
However, interestingly, it portrays the whistleblowers as someone innocent! Especially Brittany Kaiser.
It also focuses on only Cambridge Analytica, and doesn’t talk about any other such firms working around the globe. Not even mentioning that there are any! let alone giving any more names!
Is The Great Hack itself a manipulative propaganda film?
This could possibly be the case! The film does mainly these two things:
- Presents only cambridge analytica as a criminal, except the employees who agreed to give interviews for the documentary and were shown in it
- Makes you believe that your only concern about personal data security is your manual data that you gave them, and you can counter it effectively by uninstalling facebook app from the mobile device and use it from computer only, and other such stupid and ridiculous things
The problem is, the data, the big data, does exist. And it’s not just received from the facebook profile or by the surveys you fill in. There is a lot more going on, which this film fails to even point to and makes the person look into a specific direction, losing focus from the bigger picture.
The Great Hack – Review Summary
To summarise the review, the documentary film, The Great Hack, itself seems to be a manipulative propaganda film, part of some bigger and Greater Hack, which we might experience soon! But lets see if we detect it, or we get manipulated easily too, just like shown in the movie itself!