User reviews

Ok so overall my opinion of this documentary if it can be called that went from very good in the first 30-40 minutes and downhill beyond that point resulting in 6 stars from me. Maybe 5.

Why? The main guy (who's name I've forgotten because that's how immaterial he becomes to the narrative as times passes) wants to know what's happened to his data, how its being used etc. Basically the only guy in this entire Doc that comes across as having a genuine motive.

The rest of the Doc is basically a Brittany Kaiser/Kim Kardashian follow around blow hard piece. The more you watch Brittany Kaiser feign shock or any of the other "I'm a real human woman" emotions she displays on screen the more irritating this Doc becomes and the more you come to the conclusion she's vapid and incredibly vainglorious.

Its originally presented as her "Stepping Forward" because she realises FB/CA/What she did was just evil and needed to be stopped. As time passes watching the Doc its blindingly obvious it was nothing of the sort.

She was a willing participant who loved the spotlight, money and access she had. As soon as that house of cards looked shaky she bailed out and found her next "cause" that would pay her money. This Netflix Doc is a very very poor attempt at real analysis of this subject and Brittany Kaiser comes across as somebody clearly obsessed with her own ego.

I challenge anybody to watch this Doc and come away with an alternative impression about her. She's opportunistic and absolutely LOVES the cameras on her and this Doc and she's almost borderline name dropping names or subjects every time she gets the chance to show how important "she once was".

Vainglorious and irritating but good portions of the Doc had quality but in no way should she have been its focus. She's just as guilty and vapid as the rest of them and it shows.

Engrossing film, and reveals the extent of data scraping that is going on in today's world that is then being used for nefarious purposes.

Interesting to see how it all works, but my beef with the flick is the one-sided view of one of the main characters in Kaiser.

Plain to see that this is a person with little to no moral compass, that happily did what she did to hobnob and feel important/to make an impact. When it was apparent that the sky was falling, she happily turned "whistleblower" and spilled everything she could on operations. I failed to see her show any remorse for the work she did in setting up the whole infrastructure over 3.5+ years. Yet throughout the film she is portrayed as being free from blame and just a source of information, when she clearly sold her soul to make money and for other purposes known only to her. The film-makers almost portray her as a victim and instead of asking the hard questions, appear to be content to play best friend.

The doco could have been much more impactful and meaningful if they had retained independence and reported as such, but all in all a worthwhile watch.

Have a look at many of the reviewers who have given this film 1 star - many usernames with random collection of digits at the end - click on their review history and you'll see they've submitted a small handful of reviews, all either "liberal propaganda" accusations or extremely brief reviews of politically-neutral films just to create the impression of a real user account. I guess this film touched a nerve! Overall the film gave a solid account of the workings of Cambridge Analytica, but I do agree that it was a little uncritical of the morally repugnant Brittany Kaiser. The transformation of the internet from an excellent research tool into a propaganda machine where the most reliable content is locked behind firewalls is a sad inevitability of this world. Who knows what the answer is? Switch off your devices and go for a walk, I guess.

This documentary is a fascinating account of The Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

In early 2018, Cambridge Analytica became a household name. The company had exploited the personal data of millions of Facebook users, without their knowledge or consent, and used it for political propaganda.

At a running time of almost two hours, The Great Hack is overlong, but it remains a largely engrossing watch.

The story of the notorious and now defunct Cambridge Analytica is told through the eyes of those who uncovered the scandal, and some of its former employees. One of the film's best features is the way in which it renders invisible data exploitation visible, by giving shape and colour to the 2.5 quintillion data points we produce every day. Understanding how this data is collected, shared and (mis)used is difficult for most of us to comprehend, but the Great Hack does a good job of visualising it.

The Great Hack spends a lot of time - perhaps too much time - with Brittany Kaiser, the former business development director for Cambridge Analytica. She spoke out days after the Guardian reported her alleged involvement in a smear campaign in the Nigerian 2015 election, but this context of Kaiser's decision to go public, and other key details about her complicated story are not covered. She is actually a far more ambiguous character than she appears to be in the documentary.

Through Kaiser, and previously unreleased files and recordings, The Great Hack gets into details of how Cambridge Analytica operated. In one of the film's most convincing scenes, we learn how SCL Elections, Cambridge Analytica's parent company, engineered a grassroots youth movement in Trinidad and Tobago to "increase apathy" so that young Afro-Caribbeans would not vote. This highlights a theme that often got lost in the midst of a scandal that focussed primarily on the company's involvement in the 2016 US presidential election and the Brexit referendum - which is that countries with fewer laws and protections often serve as testing grounds for the worst practices by companies.

In one scene Kaiser discusses a PowerPoint slide that shows all the different data sources the company has used. Next to Facebook, we see the logo of data broker Acxiom. It is in moments like these, that the Great Hack hints at, but fails to explain exactly how the story of a single company links to a broader narrative about a systemic and looming threat - and the importance of enforceable data rights in addressing this challenge.

Netflix's The Great Hack (2019) is a very timely documentary to remember how our personal data can be used in ways we do not understand and aiming to change our behaviour against our interests. The film dissects a critical look on how Brexit and the latest US Elections suffered from unethical use of data mining and psychographics. An urgent call for us to protect better our data and request with our consumption patterns that our rights are always defended by the tech giants

It is an unsettling documentary that reveals how no one has any privacy anymore. Scary!

People saying that its one sided, haven't yet explained how....with examples that are not in the movie....

The Obama campaign was partially responsible for the increase in popularity for using data to target the people on the fence about key topics. This was mentioned in the movie and spoken about.......

The right has used this tactic many times and won as a result of them. Which should allow you to conclude for yourselves what side really is using this to arrive at the end result.

You just have to take some time to research about the owners of Cambridge Analytics where to understand where the owners come from and what their agenda is....And it aint their love for people (social reasons).

Dont kid yourselves.......you only need to see who is winning the major debates by the smallest of margins to understand you does this well.

After seeing this I'm thinking that I might want to close my Facebook account. We live in a crazy world these days where people will do just about anything to survive wth using social media for data mining and anything. All part of the bigger design for us to see ourselves more clearly I'm starting to think and perhaps good for a reorganization of how we do things but it will probably get more crazier before it gets saner. I suggest rather than making an opinion to watch this title based on the reviews you see on imdb and Rotten Tomatoes, go watch it for yourself and come up with your own opinions. . .we now know that many reviews are put out by bots and paid writers so it's hard to get what's real these days. The only way is for one to start thinking for themselves rather than just believing what others say or social media says. You'll find all the answers inside.

It shows how the various social networks use advertising and our data to manipulate us and change the situation of an electoral campaign. It is similar to "The social dilemma".

Read the critical reviews here and ask yourself to what use we have put the hyper powerful computing power ,infinite memory storage and vast amounts of OUR DATA controlled by , literally, a handful of people. Granted it's mostly for commerce, selling us stuff, until it becomes selling our data to people or entities who clearly don't have our best interests in mind or at heart. And this handful of people cares not one wit to whom they are selling our data or what their ultimate aims might be. ??? leftist propaganda??? One need only look at the decidedly anti democratic trends sweeping the globe to understand how powerful the manipulation of people through the use of the data they surrender, either willing or not is. This film attempts to illuminate the dangers of weaponizing our data and using it against us to undermine democracy and how vulnerable we are to that sort of manipulation. There are real world consequences , Myanmar for one and those are bloody consequences. Propaganda is certainly the familiar domain of the fascists who currently hold sway. across the globe. Despite what the reviews on offer here proclaim this film is hardly propaganda , far from it.

This truly is something that every human being should see. The way we're being manipulated is absolutely astounding. That being said, the documentary could have been done much better.

This film isn't about who won, it's how they won, it's not about who is using yiur data, it's the fact that they are. It's about data rights, not the right, not the left.....come on folks of IMDb you are cleverer than this. It's an important movie so watch it again.

Maybe it was focusing on parts of the main characters lives that weren't as interesting as the overall story happening around them that held this back, or maybe it was not doing enough to really press the vital nature of what it was talking about, but there was just something holding this back from being a really great doc that has the power to change things. Solid and decently made, just not a classic.

I'm a strong privacy proponent and even more so that any citizen should be in full control of his own data at all times. I have watched countless of documentaries about data privacy: Terms and Conditions May Apply, A Good American, Citizenfour, Nothing to Hide, etc.

Unfortunately, this documentary is out there to point fingers at a "one size fits all" culprit, assuming all gullible voters are getting their news from social networks only. This is a very sad hypothesis that is maintained all through the 2 hours.

It started OK with the build up around the data privacy issue on social networks, but quickly evolves with the introduction of two ex-Cambridge Analytica (CA) employees the documentarists like to call "Whistleblowers". These two knew very well that what they were doing at CA was toxic and unethical, pushed it, got paid for it and are now trying to milk a dead cow one last time.

Christopher Wylie was key in revealing the inner-outs at CA. But what isn't mentioned in the Doc is that he's also one key resource who pitched the idea of aggressive data mining, first in 2009 to the Liberal party of Canada (who refused because too privacy-intrusive), then to CA in 2013-2014 (See CBC news article - Source #11 on his Wikipedia Webpage.) This person profited extensively from this, and now that CA is down, he plays the good guy by pretending to be a whistleblower. In the Doc, he goes as far as making the poor comparison that what happened in 2016 with Trumps/Brexit was cheating, and just like the Olympics, cheaters should lose their medal. Well, what about him? Will he pay back what he earned buy building this privacy invasive tool? (Probably not.)

Then comes Brittany Kaiser, ex-Director at CA who clearly lacks a moral compass and only thrive on her ego and pride herself as being a "whistleblower" when her world has finally crumbled. She worked on Obama campaign but switched side at CA to work on Brexit and Trump campaign because this job paid (her own comment btw).

None of them are whistleblowers: They are opportunist who profited to the maximum of their position at CA until the scandal exploded. They are key elements that led to my data privacy exploitation and yours as well. They are no Edward Snowden who quit a well paid (200k/yr) job to denounce the NSA. Far from it.

There's a 3rd whistleblower (Paul-Olivier Dehaye), but the documentary makes very few reference to him, so I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Paul Hilder, the Political Technologist, who, in Thailand, tries to convince Mrs Kaiser that using targeted ads and data to "manipulate" voters on the fence to vote for one party or another is unethical and wrong. Political parties has been doing this for years, but now it's outrageous, apparently. Businesses are doing it too. There's mention of Obama using social media "wisely" during his 2012 campaign. But when the other side does it, it becomes a scandal?

I expected better from this documentary but my wife and I were left disappointed. Yes, the whole privacy invasion is disgusting, but it's the government's job to tackle it with appropriate laws. And so far, we don't see a lot of efforts to do so, no matter the party in place.

"If you run campaigns designed to undermine people's ability to make free choices and to understand what is real and not real, you are undermining democracy and treating voters in the same way as you are treating terrorists." Christopher Wylie, Cambridge Analytica whistleblower.

Don't cancel your Facebook account just yet even though The Great Hack does a credible job exposing its abuse of privacy data for each of us. This carefully thought out and smoothly presented Netflix exposition of Cambridge Analytica's effective data shenanigans during the 2016 presidential election and pre-Brexit initiative is informative and entertaining, just like a good doc should be. Harvesting information on more than 50 million Facebookers is impressive and scary.

The major player here is Brittany Kaiser, the former director of business development for Cambridge Analytics, a defunct political data outfit; she turns on the company after serious soul searching. Like many of us as well, playing with psycho data on millions of subscribers to direct them to either trump or Brexit seems beyond the pale of democratic social media that should be neutral at all times. As for Kaiser, well, she's a hired gun who worked for Clinton before Cambridge-in her I don't trust.

Although Kaiser could be held up to intense scrutiny for the Trump campaign and Brexit, her meeting with Wikileaks' Julian Assange and his subsequent disclosures about Hillary Clinton seem to damn her just as well. Yet, she is contrite here, seemingly trying to right the wrongs of the cyber terrorism Cambridge Analytics clearly fomented. Anyway, the intrigue is unusually ripe for a documentary.

Besides the narrative magnetism of Cambridge's targeted messaging and psychographic manipulating is the caution for those of us who are lucky just to be able to write a word document-watch your identity ever so carefully. Current technology can know us and our personalities with thousands of reference points just for us, some of whom are the "persuadables" who can be directed to political and social ends. The Russians are coming.

The Great Hack focusses almost entirely on Cambridge Analytica and their use of Facebook data in manipulating both the Trump presidential campaign and the Brexit campaign, both in 2016. I remember following this pretty much as it happened. I didn't read too much into it, but I was aware of Cambridge Analytica's involvement, their connection to Facebook, and all the official investigations that spawned from them. I knew there was a guy who took them to court demanding his data back, and I know the work of Carole Cadwalladr. So for me this documentary wasn't quite as enlightening as it maybe should've been. For me, all it did was supply context and connect it all up in a nice little package.

My biggest criticism comes from how specific it was. As I said, this documentary is about Cambridge Analytica using Facebook data to manipulate political outcomes. The truth is that this is a much large issue that involves many more individuals and companies around the world. At best the documentary mentions them, glosses over them, and then moves on. One such example being the social media techniques used in the Obama campaign of 2012. What I've just said is as deep as the documentary delves into it, like a bullet point that has to be ticked off in order to appear neutral. It doesn't explain what techniques were used, by who, or how much of an impact it had. Similarly the documentary features a lot of content from a sales presentation of Cambridge Analytica's, but only pinpoints what it wants to talk about; what supports it's message. On a page all about what and how much data Cambridge Analytica has to draw from, Facebook is not the only one, but none of the other data-farming companies are even mentioned in passing. Who are they? Where did they get our data? Should we be concerned about them too? Ultimately The Great Hack feels shallow, because it only scratches the surface. It only talks about the most well-known and talked about case. What about other companies like Cambridge Analytica who are still functioning today?

I also felt in failed to provide opposing viewpoints. Okay, much of that couldn't be helped. They did have one guy from Cambridge Analytica, but he didn't provide anything of much substance, and when he contradicted other people featured, there was no explanation or citation behind which person is the more credible. Case in point, we are introduced to Chris Wylie who blew the whole thing open. The Great Hack hails him as a hero. Later on the guy who worked for Cambridge Analytica (Julian Wheatland) chimes in to discredit Wylie, saying he only worked at the company for nine months. The documentary just cuts to the next scene, never offers citation or explanation, and I was left wondering whether Wylie was a credible source or not. Was he someone we should be getting behind or someone we should be a bit more wary of? They featured Wheatland's discrediting to sow doubt and, again, appear neutral, but did nothing with the information. Other than Wheatland, every other viewpoint was very much from those trying to bring the company down, from outside the industry. The only word we got from Alexander Nix (Cambridge Analytica CEO) was in archive footage from investigations, or leaked soundbites from a sales pitch.

However the viewpoints we do get were enthralling to watch from a purely entertainment standpoint. David Carroll is the guy who took Cambridge Analytica to court for his data back. He's a knowledgeable guy who knows what he's talking about, but being a victim means he actually doesn't know a whole lot beyond his own case. He's almost dropped entirely by about halfway through the documentary. Carole Cadwalladr features more prominently, showing off her box of research, snippets from her recent TED talk, her own version of events and what she discovered (although amusingly her article on Brittany Kaiser's involvement was barely mentioned at all until it broke and we watched Kaiser's reaction). The other big contributor is Brittany Kaiser, and in many ways this documentary is her story. This is her redemption arc, in a way. We learn about how she started out in human rights, became an intern in Obama's campaign, but then her family got into financial trouble so she joined Cambridge Analytica in order to actually earn some money. The film portrays her as hugely remorseful of the things she was involved in, and her personal viewpoint of things talked about are enlightening to hear directly from her. Whether she comes off as likeable or ethical is subjective, and ultimately irrelevant to what the documentary is trying to achieve.

In all I'd say The Great Hack is a good starting point of a documentary. If you're not aware of the things it talks about, it will be enlightening. It may even change your social media habits. But it also feels shallow and one-sided. I don't feel like I got the whole picture, and too many details were glossed over or left out entirely. Some revelations like Cambridge Analytica's brutal involvement in Trinidad & Tobago will leave a sour taste, as will all the unrepentant confessions caught on the sly, but for the most part what was featured is easily searched up on the internet; I encountered most of it by accident as it was happening. I give The Great Hack a 7/10. It did its job, even if its job was too focussed and specific.

Agree with many other people's reviews that it is a little sad that the whistleblowers are portrayed as the victims when they are clearly smart enough to know what they were doing, how much money they could make and turned a blind eye until it all went pear shaped. Seriously. Listen to what Brittany says. 'I have no interest in guns'. She joined the NRA and went on hunting trips to mix with her clients and find out their point of view. Wow. Who wouldn't sell their soul to know understand their clients better? Worth a watch though. But listen out for the contradictions while they ALL blame Facebook and never question their own morality.

Now it's more than obvious that our online data has been and it still is being exploited to its maximum capacity. Of course "they" want to squeeze it all (not only a part of it) and have all the juice, because "their" interest is to have all the power in order to achieve some bad interest. I think we're pretty screwed at this point in time, simply because we don't have the time to read end users license agreements in their entirety and, well, that might, more or less, cause problems along the way. And that's one of the issues, I guess. Until some AI authority gets created to address these issues, I think we're gonna stay in this uncertain position as a society for a while.

The documentary is genuinely scary but not that surprising. Should be watched by all just to show the scale of data mining to the public. Well worth a watch.

After the last Netflix documentary I watched, I was fearful for this. Yes it's hyper-stylised and a bit US focused, but it's rather good (in a concerning way). The 2016 US Election is used as an anchor, exploring how data is gleaned, sold, used. Cambridge Analytica, their claimed 5000 data points on every American voter, how they used that. It's not totally US obsessed, the other anchor point is Brexit and for me this is where it gets interesting. Farage, Bannon, Brexit being the "Petri dish" for the Trump election. We all willingly give up a lot of data, in order to use online services. We acknowledge that this is used for targeted advertising, millennials largely except this, growing up in the digital world it's deemed normal. An election though, using that information to plot politically, now that's different! Christopher Wylie is a very interesting character, the neon pink haired whistleblower of Cambridge Analytica, a data scientist with the inside scoop on the "Full Service Propaganda Machine", but it's Brittany Kaiser that's the focus here. Painted rather differently, she's a questionable character, filmed living the high life, an ill gotten one. She seems to still be struggling with the notion that she was on the wrong side, after starting out with Amnesty International, before going to Cambridge Analytica, she's swept up in a more conservative world and clearly enjoys the ride, without thinking about the consequences of her actions. As for our online world, we've quickly gone from 'Let's share some photos and connect with friends', to our seemingly innocent data being weaponised. Not just what we share, but also the digital rights of our friends too, no borders, the wild west of the internet. 'Oh I don't use facebook'... doesn't matter, the net was cast so far and wide, it affects anyone who's ever used a computer. It's surveillance plain and simple. Going forward we hope it'll change, but this happened and probably still happens. Manipulation did take place, Brexit, US2016... technically rigged. Of course Facebook are the big bad guys, for allowing this, monetising this. We trust them and Zuckerberg just sidesteps responsibility. The documentary itself is a mix of the expected motion graphics illustrating our online social interactions and the narrative they create. This is coupled with archival newsreel to drive the message home, but there's also a lot of new interview footage following Kaiser as she's dragged more and more into the story uncovering the unethical practices she was involved in, coming clean on what happened, without excepting any blame. Now that she's outside, she happy to slate Cambridge Analytica. I think she's almost unaware of what she enabled. Perhaps it's arguable that she was as used as the data set... but to my mind she's still culpable. There's also a personal story at the heart of this, one that was the catalyst for the unravelling of the bigger picture and triggering all this, that of David Carroll and his lawsuit demanding access to his own data, essentially peaking behind the curtain of what it is that these corporations and campaigns are dealing in. It's all about disinformation, propaganda, lies, targeting the 'persuadables'. Not those who knew whether they wanted the EU or not, or wanted Clinton or Trump, this was about those undecided, looking for information, for help on making a decision and being spun a web of crafted lies to steer them. Communication warfare. The graphics are lovely though. Not especially innovative, but clean, beautifully paced, someone has done a great job. As it finishes, nothing is resolved. For Carroll, for Kaiser, for any of it. In a film full of very scary implications, this is perhaps the scariest thing of all. Data rights don't look to be changing any time soon and I'm sure people of questionably morality aren't going anywhere either. So we have to decide, how we use the internet, how we understand it and what we believe.

I am reading some of the reviews here and I cannot help but think that we deserve what's coming, and what's coming it's definitely NOT GOOD.

How can people still remain so oblivious after watching this, where Cambridge Analytica goes out in the open and puts in a positive light, the fact that they manipulated people? Okay, you're judging the documentary, how was constructed, made, etc, BUT at the same time, you have the FACTS, THE PROOF, for how these kind of companies know MORE about yourself than you will ever know, how they manipulated gullible people, feeding them lies and fake information.

People are still minimizing the level of importance of what's happening now within our society, in a world that definitely moves faster than the majority of people. This documentary shows exactly how we are built, as human beings. There will always be someone who sees further than "tomorrow" and the exploitation of it. But don't worry, you will not be affected by it. Just go to the other tab, and keep scrolling through those new posts!

This documentary was entertaining and held my interest, BUT, not sure that the reactions of protagonists were justified. They acted like they were blowing the lid off the biggest scandal in the world. So this company mined your personal data off FB without permission to try and target ads to sway your vote. OK, that is not cool, but...so what? Nobody will ever convince me that FB ads are more persuasive than the incessant, 24/7, attack ads run by the DNC and the RNC themselves in the lead up to a presidential election. I saw literally thousands of those ads in the months ahead of Nov. 2016 on TV all day every day. Did some ads on FB have more sway than those attack ads? No way.

...but most won't admit. Why? Simply because we're addicted to it. Who could shut down fb (or any other social network) account, or TV, after watching this documentary (or "Snowden", or even 1971's "Network")? 1? 2? None? Whoever believes technology is here for the good of the society, they're just deep trapped into that illusion. Technology developed for military purposes. That's the "A". Business and commerce is the "B". What is the "C"? "Control". Who's behind that? Freaks of the highest elite. What they want? Everything. Our mind, souls, and all the resources and wealth this planet can offer. What can we do? Well, not much. The majority is blind, and they're "happy" in their blindness. One-eyed, they are few, and usually suffer from depression (often because they can't stand all that "beep" going on around 'em). Two-eyed, i've never met. So i guess there's no way out for our deeply hypnotised and failed species, except maybe from a "hard reset"...