Netflix Cambridge Analytica Movie: Social Media is "Like a Crime Scene"

And if someone told you that the applications you use daily, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp, are all "crime scenes"?

These are the words that the designers of a new Netflix documentary called The Great Hack use to describe social media.

The film tells one of the biggest scandals of recent times, when information from millions of Facebook profiles has been pbaded on to a company called Cambridge Analytica.

The company used information about what people liked, who they traded with, or what they posted to tailor ads to their social media for political campaigns.

These included Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and the Leave.EU campaign.

"Data has now become the most valuable badet in the world, more than oil," Radio Newsbeat 1 told Jehane Noujaim, one of the directors of The Great Hack.

"There is a fight for your personal data, which is turning into a weapon to allow you to vote as the people who bought your data want it."

Jehane says we "live in the womb" and she and her co-director Karim Amer want the film to help us all understand how our information is used and everyone is talking about it.

The filmmakers followed three people who played an important role in the scandal.

One of them is Brittany Kaiser, who worked for Cambridge Analytica and then explained what was going on in society.

"She began her career as an idealist trainee in Barack Obama's campaign, seeing the rise of these technologies and tools being used," says Karim.

He said Brittany and his colleagues "invented the way social media would be used in politics".

"Then we see the same person working at Cambridge Analytica, in the center of Brexit, in the center of the Trump campaign."

Thanks to her and other contributors, they came to understand how we came to a place where technology has a huge impact on our lives.

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"These things started as spaces to share our tastes, our musical preferences, our selfies," says Karim.

"So the question is, if Facebook is a crime scene, how can we get justice?"

He thinks that the idea that crimes are committed only in the physical world is now totally superfluous.

Karim says that we should consider our personal data as "a virtual voodoo doll" that "reflects your emotional pulse".

"Every moment of the day and every different day adapts to who you are and what the algorithm thinks you want.

"If this voodoo doll is effective, it's because you constantly give your fingerprints."

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Despite their comments on social media, neither Jehane nor Karim think we should stop him completely.

"It's a matter of consent," says Karim, who thinks people "really do not understand" the data they give up.

"We are deceived," he says.

"These apps are designed to constantly question you, your every move, and sell your location and contact information to the highest bidder."

The Great Hack is on Netflix in the UK and Ireland now.

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