Cambridge Analytica. Does the name sound familiar to you? The company became infamous in 2018 following the debacle surrounding the U.S. election and harnessing Facebook user’s personal data.
The Great Hack tries to hack into your fears, but ultimately fails in its great ambition.
Ironically coming out on Netflix, a streaming platform which harnesses the same algorithms the movie was lamenting, The Great Hack is produced and directed by one of its central figures David Carroll, a professor of media studies in the U.S.
Carroll gained renown in the Cambridge Analytica story after filing a lawsuit and requesting a notice of information on his personal data the firm had collected.
Along with several others featured in the film, he became an activist for data rights. But the film opens with him at a seminar, guiding a discussion on targeted internet advertising in one of his classes.
“Maybe it’s because I grew up with the Internet, but the ads don’t bother me that much. When does it turn sour?” one student pipes up.
That’s the main point the documentary grapples with. When does what Cambridge Analytica is doing become bad? And how bad is it?
The film strives to scare you into believing that the answers to these questions are immediately and unimaginably bad.
The film flips between Carroll’s perspective, looking on from the sidelines and awaiting the Cambridge Analytica’s response to the request for his data, Christopher Wylie, the pink-haired whistleblower who testified against Cambridge Analytica in a U.S. Senate hearing, and another whistleblower, Brittany Kaiser.
Kaiser’s perspective is the focus for much of the film, and her conflicted state of mind mirrors that of the main theme of the movie. She inhabited the political scheming world that made everyone so suspicious of Cambridge Analytica. She attended Conservative conferences, met with Donald Trump and pro-BREXIT politicians.
The film portrays her as linked to all the harm that Cambridge Analytica perpetrated. However her character is shown to have embarked on a redemptive arc by following in Wylie’s footsteps and becoming a whistleblower against her former employers.
The process of testifying against her former employers is the central conflict in the second half of the film, and pushes the narrative towards its thesis, by asking big questions about democracy in the modern world.
“Can we ever have a free and fair election again?” a journalist posits to a panel at one point.
This should be a terrifying question. But ultimately, the post-democratic world the movie is trying to show you feels less House of Cards and more Veep.
Weaving together archive footage, interviews and bright futuristic graphics used to illustrate the architecture of the data, The Great Hack is a sophisticated piece of filmmaking. Technically, it’s solid.
The film is also sophisticated in its knowledge of current digital media and assumes the audience is too. Films often talk about internet culture like we’re in the ’90s at the dawn of the web. The Great Hack treats its audience like 21st-century humans by assuming they know how social media works.
These graphic sections in particular seem to be trying to evoke the same future fear-mongering emotions Black Mirror does, but the latter does it far more successfully.
Ultimately, The Great Hack struggles with the source material it is handed.
The threat companies like Cambridge Analytica pose to democracy and the truth is critical. But communicating these ideas, it often seems to lack a concrete threat level.
The general public is often accused of not caring enough about politics. Civic engagement!
The fact is, as the film illustrates, these issues of targeted advertising are likely only to be aimed at a small group of people, or “the persuadable.” For most people, there is no physical threat. It is this abstract sense that the film argues democracy is being unfairly tampered with, which means the overall message lacks punch.
There’s a lot to digest, and at nearly two hours, the film ultimately likely gives you too much time to do so. It drags. Instead of creating fear for the future, the movie begins to drift in its second act beginning to retread the same arguments. This is a threat to democracy. This is a threat to democracy.
However, during the film, Alexander Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, argues that what his company is doing is nothing more than targeted political campaigning. And considering the case The Great Hack is arguing, they never really find a riposte for this point.
Presenting both sides of an argument is absolutely key for a non-fiction piece. Though you need to make me believe you, Nix’s point is so clearly articulated it undercuts all the repetitive messaging offered by The Great Hack.
Ultimately, the film created more doubts than before I watched it. Prior to viewing, I was convinced that the sinister behaviour of Cambridge Analytica was reprehensible and deserved to be punished. Now, I can see the other side. That means The Great Hack failed.
6 Heavy-handed morality lessons/10 Down with the kids Twitter references
Photo by Tim Austen
