The Great Hack 2019 Documentary Lessons

The Great Hack is a Netflix doccie that looks into how individual human data is being used to influence the decisions being made in national elections.

It delves into how data was harvested from major tech companies (each US individual has at least 5,000 data points) and used to influence the "persuadable" demographic in swing states to vote in favor of the candidate who won the US election in 2016. It also shows how the same was done for a country like Trinidad and Tobago,with a very different strategy being used to achieve the same results for the winning team.

At the end of the day, the biggest question to ask is, what are My data rights? Can one choose to opt out when these big analysis companies collect individual data? What data rights will the children being born into this connected world have by the time they are grown ups?

I know of an individual who once got his social media account duplicated and the hacker went ahead to make political statements against the ruling class and party of his country. Ever since, some people believe he wanted to get into politics (he hates politics) even though he closed the offensive account after reporting it. It is a small example of how a hacker can put one's life in the limelight and change a number of people's opinion on the individual. The Great Hack looks at this phenomenon on a far much larger scale

In our modern world, it's impossible for any individual to go about their business without being observed in one way or another. How does an individual get an account of how the collected information is being used?