A top-10 worst feeling in the world is learning that you’ve been manipulated.
The Great Hack, which debuts on Netflix today, though, makes an airtight case for why everyone should care. Directed by Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim, the film documents the fall of data-driven “behaviour change agents” Cambridge Analytica, the events that led up to the scandal, and what might come next.
The focus is primarily on three principal characters: professor and digital rights advocate David Carroll, who attempts litigation to recover his stolen data from Cambridge; Guardian journalist Carole Cadwalladr, who was the target of much online harassment for her role in uncovering the story; and former Cambridge Analytica employee Brittany Kaiser, whose testimony may have proven more consequential than pink-haired whistle-blower Christopher Wylie, who was lower on the corporate food chain than Kaiser.