I Watched “The Great Hack” on Netflix 3 Times and I Need to Talk to You About It. Right Now.
I have now watched The Great Hack on Netflix three times since it came out. I felt called to share my most important takeaways, and to ask each one of you to also watch it.
Why?
Because it’s a visual, cliff’s-notes-esque lesson on the dirty underbelly of how our private data is being used against us.
We all know that our data is recorded. What we didn’t know (until the people from Cambridge Analytica were brought to testify about their illegal doings with our Facebook information) is that your personal data is being used against us at a military-grade level as an actual weapon. A weapon that literally gamed the election. The Great Hack outlines, explains and visualizes exactly HOW that was done brilliantly.
Disclaimer: the author of this piece is tech savvy and creates online campaigns that utilize targeting audience segments on Facebook and Instagram for her clients, and even she was stunned into disbelief at the films’ revelations. She is in no way associated with the documentary itself.
Key takeaways:
- Data rights are human rights.
- Data has surpassed oil in value. READ THAT AGAIN. Your private data is valued at higher than the price of oil.
- Your data is being sold, stolen, mined and used to skew and dictate actual world events and election outcomes.
- After the Brits investigated Cambridge Analytica and their theft of user data to set up the campaign for Brexit, the parliamentary investigation panel concluded the following: “our elections are not fit for purpose.” Essentially, with data being used in order to create and publish disinformation targeted at apathetic voters in order to swing them, it is impossible to have a free and fair election process ever again.
- Once they petri dish that was Brexit was successful, the same folks moved on to the Trump campaign. The amount of money they poured into false Facebook disinformation ads (remember the ‘Crooked Hilary’ ad? Yep, they created that) vs. how much the Democrats put in to their election ads, was exponentially higher. Here’s an actual screenshot from the film:
6. The 2016 U.S. election was decided by three main districts. Three.
7. The next frame in the screenshot above reveals this information:
At this point in our technological and social evolution we are simply not going to stop data being shared and used for evil purposes. However, here are 5 things I believe we can each do right now to help bring back balance:
- Educate ourselves. Watch this documentary. Understand what it is teaching us. Form a working knowledge of how to summarize it without talking policy.
- If you have close family members who bought into Facebook propaganda that incites fear and bigotry and voted along those lines (these are likely also people who you can no longer have a proper discussion with about what is happening in our country because you find yourself SO opposed in principle), ask them to watch the documentary with you or on their own. Tell them that it is about the very core of our human rights as people who use the internet and who vote. Help them understand the technical aspects of data, as likely people in this category also are older and don’t understand what “fake news” actually, truly is. Help them feel more informed rather than attacked on a political basis.
- Take a step back if your news feed about the upcoming elections saddens you.
- Learn how to identify trolls and bots in comments. Since watching this film (even though I knew it to be true before) it has become easier for me to cast aside hate-filled comments as bots. Look past the manipulation of our digital avatars to remember that actually, there are way more good people out there. The real people who do post bigoted, racist comments? Well, realize that they are afraid. They are the ones who these campaigns rely on to make SURE that they vote for the nationalist, fanatical candidates and to help spread the disinformation. We are being used as pawns against one another.
- Learn more about the level of weapons-grade psy-ops that was used in the Brexit campaign (as a trial run) and then the Trump campaign and discuss it with anyone in your family or circle who votes.
I believe in technology and social media as a tool that will evolve the human race. I believe in the good and connectivity that it brings. I also know that we created it; it is born of us. Who knows what sinister parts of our subconscious have been unknowingly programmed into its framework. But what I do know is this:
If we believe that technology will become the stuff of nightmares, it will. If we believe that it is necessary to our survival and that it can do tremendous good and work side-by-side with us to solve complex problems, ushering new eras of peace, it will.
I choose to believe the latter.
