You probably think you're in control of your choices. You choose your shoes, your coffee, and certainly your vote. But then you watch The Great Hack documentary on Netflix, and suddenly, that sense of agency feels a bit like a lie. It’s a chilling look at how our personal data was weaponized to manipulate global events. Honestly, it’s not just a movie about a defunct company; it’s a horror story about the invisible strings attached to your smartphone.
Brittany Kaiser, a former executive at Cambridge Analytica, sits in a pool in Thailand, looking like someone who knows too much. She’s one of the central figures of the film, and her journey from a human rights intern to a high-level data operative is frankly bizarre. The documentary follows her and David Carroll, a New York professor who went on a legal crusade to get his data back. It sounds dry. It isn't.
The film reveals how a company you’ve probably never heard of—Cambridge Analytica—claimed to have 5,000 data points on every single American voter. Think about that. Every "Like," every "Share," every personality quiz you took in 2014 to find out which Disney princess you are was harvested. They didn't just want your name; they wanted your psychological profile. They wanted to know what makes you scared.
The Invisible War for Your "Likes"
The core of The Great Hack documentary is the idea that data has surpassed oil as the world's most valuable asset. But unlike oil, data is extracted from us. The film does a great job of visualizing this. You see these digital trails—little glowing dots and lines—representing the constant stream of information we leak into the ether every second. It’s visual poetry for a very ugly reality.
Cambridge Analytica didn't just target everyone. That would be a waste of money. Instead, they focused on the "persuadables." These were the people whose minds could actually be changed by a specific type of nudge. If the data showed you were prone to anxiety, you might see an ad about rising crime. If you were highly patriotic, you'd see something else entirely. It was a bespoke reality, manufactured specifically to trigger a reaction.
Social media was the delivery mechanism. Facebook, in particular, took a massive hit to its reputation because of this. The documentary details the "GSR" app—Global Science Research—created by Aleksandr Kogan. It was a simple personality quiz. About 270,000 people took it. But because of Facebook’s lax permissions at the time, the app was able to scrape the data of those users' friends as well. That’s how a small pool of participants turned into a database of 87 million people.
Why David Carroll’s Quest Matters
David Carroll is the moral compass of the film. He’s not a whistleblower; he’s a concerned citizen and an educator. He filed a legal claim in the UK—where Cambridge Analytica’s parent company, SCL Group, was based—to see exactly what they had on him.
His argument was simple: data is property. If you have my data, I should have the right to see it and understand how you’re using it.
The struggle he faced was immense. Cambridge Analytica fought him at every turn. They eventually declared bankruptcy, which Carroll argues was a strategic move to avoid a full forensic audit of their servers. It’s frustrating to watch. You want him to win. You want the "smoking gun" to appear in a neat file folder. Real life is rarely that clean, though. The company vanished, but the technology and the tactics they pioneered? Those are still very much alive.
The Myth of the "Clean" Election
People talk about "election interference" like it’s just hackers in hoodies. The Great Hack documentary shows it's actually much more corporate and "consultant-heavy" than that. It covers the Brexit "Leave" campaign and the 2016 US Presidential election, but it also touches on work done in Trinidad and Tobago.
In Trinidad, they allegedly targeted the youth vote with a campaign called "Do So." It looked like a grassroots movement of apathy—encouraging kids not to vote as a sign of protest. But according to the film, this was a calculated move to suppress the turnout of one specific ethnic demographic, knowing the other side’s base would still show up. It’s cynical. It’s brilliant. It’s terrifying.
The documentary forces you to ask: can we ever have a fair election again? If one side is using "military-grade" psychological operations and the other side is playing by old-school rules, the "marketplace of ideas" is basically a rigged casino.
Carole Cadwalladr: The Journalist Who Refused to Let Go
You can't talk about this film without mentioning Carole Cadwalladr. She’s the Guardian and Observer journalist who broke the story. In the film, she’s portrayed as a dogged investigator who faced massive legal threats and online harassment.
She points out something vital: our laws are analog, but the threats are digital. Our electoral laws were written for a time of leafleting and TV ads. They aren't equipped for dark posts—ads that only the target sees and then vanish forever. There is no public record. No accountability. If a politician lies in a TV ad, the media can fact-check it. If a bot farm sends a terrifying, false image to 10,000 specific people at 2 AM, who is there to stop it?
Misconceptions About the Documentary
- "It’s just a hit piece on the GOP." While the film focuses on the 2016 Trump campaign, the underlying issue is the technology itself. The film makes it clear that SCL Group worked for various governments and parties globally. The tools don't have a political bias; they are for sale to the highest bidder.
- "Cambridge Analytica was a fraud." Some critics argue the company was mostly "snake oil" and that their psychological profiles didn't actually work as well as they claimed. The documentary leans toward the "they were dangerous geniuses" side, but even if they were only 50% effective, that’s enough to tip a close election.
- "Facebook fixed it." While Facebook changed their API rules to prevent friend-scraping, the fundamental business model of "surveillance capitalism" remains. Your data is still the product.
The Psychological Toll of the Feedback Loop
The film touches on the "echo chamber" effect. When an algorithm knows what you like, it feeds you more of it. It’s a feedback loop that hardens your opinions. You don't just see the news; you see a version of reality that confirms your existing biases.
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The Great Hack shows how this leads to polarization. We aren't just disagreeing on policy anymore; we’re disagreeing on reality. If my Facebook feed tells me the sky is green and yours tells you it's red, we can't even have a conversation about the weather. This erosion of a "shared truth" is perhaps the most lasting damage Cambridge Analytica and their ilk have caused.
What You Can Actually Do
Watching The Great Hack documentary usually leaves people feeling powerless. You want to throw your phone in a lake. But since we live in the 21st century, that’s not really an option for most of us. Instead, look at these practical steps to claw back some of your digital sovereignty:
- Audit your "Off-Facebook Activity." In your Facebook settings, there is a section called "Off-Facebook Activity." It shows you all the apps and websites that share your data with Facebook. You can clear this history and turn it off for the future. It's eye-opening to see how many random websites are reporting back to the Mothership.
- Use Privacy-Focused Browsers. Google Chrome is a data-harvesting machine. Consider switching to Brave or Firefox, and use search engines like DuckDuckGo that don't track your search history to build a profile.
- Opt-out of Data Brokers. There are companies whose entire business is buying and selling your data (Acxiom, Epsilon, etc.). You can manually request to be removed, or use services like DeleteMe to automate the process.
- Be Skeptical of "Free" Quizzes. If you aren't paying for the product, you are the product. Those "Which Game of Thrones character are you?" quizzes are almost always data-harvesting operations. Just don't do them.
- Enable Two-Factor Authentication (2FA). While this doesn't stop data harvesting, it protects your accounts from being hijacked and used to spread misinformation in your name.
The Great Hack isn't just about a single election or a single company. It’s a wake-up call about the infrastructure of our modern world. We’ve built a system that rewards the most extreme voices and punishes nuance, all for the sake of "engagement" metrics.
The documentary ends on a somewhat somber note. David Carroll didn't get his data back in the way he wanted. Brittany Kaiser remains a polarizing figure—some see her as a hero, others as a cynical opportunist rebranding herself. But the conversation they started isn't over. We are still living in the world Cambridge Analytica helped build. The question is whether we’re willing to do the hard work of tearing it down and building something more human.
The first step is simply being aware of the strings. Once you see the "dots" connecting your digital life to the powers that want to influence you, it’s a lot harder for them to pull those strings without you noticing. Stay skeptical. Stay private. And maybe think twice before clicking "Allow" on that next app.