This documentary helped me understand what went down during the 2016 election as well as what those Zukerberg hearings were really about. I wish the filmmakers hadn't spent so much time trying to make the heads of Cambridge Analitica more likeable when really, at their core, they weren't respectable people.

Modern data analytics can be a powerful aid to marketing. What's scary is that the information that so-called "data scientists" use is often taken from us without our permission, to be sold to the highest bidder, including unsavoury participants in elections. 'The Great Hack' tells the story of Cambridge Analytica, one firm operating in this space, that was eventually ruined after its practices were exposed, but not before it had worked for Trump and the Brexit campaign. It's founders still consider themselves victims; but only because they see nothing wrong in turning elections from battles of ideas into games of manipulation. The most shocking story revealed here is one of the less well-known: the company's utterly cynical efforts to deter young Trinidadians from voting. It's very hard to feel any sympathy for the firm; and even its whistleblowers, who feature in the documentary, come across more as rats jumping the sinking ship than genuine idealists. The solution proposed by one of them, that we should be able to monetise our own data ourselves, completely misses the point if the data is used to undermine societal institutions. Cambridge Analytica may have collapsed, but the politicians it supported still damage our body politic. The film is over-long but it carries an important message: that if we, as a society, do not take control soon, we risk losing our ability to do so altogether.

THE GREAT HACK is a pretty interesting Internet-based documentary looking at the priceless value of user data and the ways in which unscrupulous technology companies are using it to influence politics and the like. It's very up to date, exploring a recent court case in which the company Cambridge Analytica became infamous very quickly. The documentary suffers a little from being over-reliant on needless CGI graphics at times, and I agree with others that far too much time was spent on the narcissistic Brittany Kaiser at the expense of more interesting material (such as Carole Cadwalladr's crusade).