[ad_1]
If you prefer do not think about how your life is locked in a dystopian canvas of your own data, do not look at the new Netflix documentary The big hack.
But if you really want to see how monitoring, data collection and targeting recovers the information we generate and binds around us until governments and businesses choke us, do not miss it. not the film, presented in preview. today on the streaming platform and in theaters. In appearance, this tells the story of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but even if you already know this sordid story, the film is worth the detour. He masterfully uses the scandal to illustrate the structures and algorithms of data mining that undermine individual freedom and democratic society, unique sharing on Facebook Like and at the same time.
"We became obsessed with the idea of bringing the algorithmic point of view to life," says co-director Karim Amer, who shot the film with Jehane Noujaim, discussing the visual language developed. by the team for the doc. "How does the algorithm see us? If we could create a perspective for this algorithm, we could help people understand our own fragility, the superstructure that exists around us, and the way it constantly sucks and collects your behavior."
The film is both succinct and in-depth, at the root of the scandal that made headlines around the world for two years after President Trump's election. It begins when we learn that Cambridge Analytica has collected unethical data from millions of Facebook users and has used them to target vulnerable and impressionable voters with the goal of electing Donald Trump and adopt the Brexit resolution. Then he follows the fallout. The film was prepared by Professor David Carroll for the purpose of retrieving his own data from Cambridge – a detailed history of WIRED – but focuses on the former Cambridge employee, Brittany Kaiser, and on his abrupt decision and some little disconcerting to turn against his employer. Directors Amer and Noujiam follow her a few days after leaving the company in 2018. At one point, she explains that the systems used by Cambridge and Facebook to influence democratic elections constitute a quality technology "weapons".
But it's hard to control a weapon you can not see, and that's where The big hack even offers those who are very familiar with data tracking and with all the history of Cambridge Analytica, something powerful and new. It makes visible the normally invisible data of our daily lives and the way they are harvested and armed against us. Through thoughtful narration and emoticon-inspired animations, Amer and Noujaim reveal the digital detritus that we leave in our wake every time we send an email, search something in a search engine, we dwell on an ad , make a purchase or click "like" on social media. And then, as the alarming music spreads in the background, the movie uses this CGI to show how this data file is used against us. Everyday. To sell us things, get us to vote or stay home after the polls, divide us or unite us according to the whims of anyone who has paid enough to take our digital wires and weave them into a canvas of their own desires.
The power of animations lies in their real and familiar appearance. They do not look like science fiction. They look like what you see every day when you interact with your devices.
Bitter says that they have intentionally kept the visual language amusing. They wanted to point out that every little data point we create during our day seems harmless. "It's a bit like an emoji-land turned dark, it must be cheerful and kind and light, and what could go wrong?" he says. "The inspiration was Fancy, Actually. The data is that dust that we are exhausting, that we publish. "This dust, explains the movie, is what Facebook and Silicon Valley, as well as the governments and Cambridge Analytica are using to choke us.
Like dust, this lucrative and shady business is so hard to see – even though we all participate – that the simplest is to ignore it. Even people who are frightened by the strange advertising targeting and who know that misinformation campaigns can erode democracy and erode democracy have a hard time imagining how it all works. That's one of the reasons, as Carroll points out in the movie, why so many people believe that their cell phone is listening to them. Your phone spying your conversations is an easier way to explain advertisements perfectly placed in your social media than the real answer: your data track has made your behavior and your desires predictable.
The visual language works perfectly in the middle of the film when both Kaiser and Carroll watch Mark Zuckerberg testify in front of the Congress in early 2018. The filmmakers give us a split screen to see their reactions, and join Carroll's tweets as well. 39, the reactions of the general public on social media using animations. It is at this moment that everything is set up: the quests of the two main characters, the invisible structures of data influence and social media and the creator of the technological platform that has undoubtedly been at the origin of the time and who has the most power to change it. When Zuckerberg repeatedly blames Facebook's privacy concerns to Cambridge Analytica, the lone wolf, Kaiser rolls his eyes. "Blame it on me, Mark, go ahead," she said, shaking her head.
Kaiser appears as a frustrating but fascinating character. Although she began her political career as a volunteer for Barack Obama, she then signed the first Cambridge Analytica contract with the Trump campaign. As an executive for Cambridge, she worked on the Leave.EU campaign and met with Julian Assange (a fact that was then interviewed as part of the Mueller investigation). And although the filmmakers are showing us deeply private conversations with her, the reason she finally decided to speak out against Cambridge Analytica is never clearly explained. She may not even know herself. But that's partly what makes the film trip with her so intimate; As the cameras follow Kaiser, she struggles in real time with the consequences of her actions.
"When we met Brittany, we did not know what to think of her, we wondered what her motives were," Noujaim explains. "What we found, in our opinion, is that she was really looking for redemption, a way to understand what she was involved in. And with her, we let's learn."
A scene of The big hack.
Netflix
The most fascinating moments of documentary occur when Kaiser suddenly seems to understand that influencing voter behavior based on data tracking and psychology is not a morally neutral act. We watch her find information on her work computer, information that seemed trivial to her at the time but which testified to the sneaky tactics of society. One particularly alarming finding of his computer is a sequence of a Cambridge Analytica sales pitch in which the company explains how it prevented voters from participating in racially-based elections in Trinidad and Tobago by creating a movement. viral youth that seemed to those who participated and strangers, as an authentic, basic phenomenon. The sales pitch shows instead that it was a carefully calibrated social media disinformation campaign created by Cambridge with the express purpose of abusing existing racial tensions to achieve a certain electoral result.
What Kaiser seems to understand is the meaning of the film: the late Cambridge Analytica was a symptom of a disease that plagues society, a disease that will not be cured with the creation of a single data processing company .
"Cambridge is really a way for us to discover the story of Facebook and Silicon Valley as a whole, and how we need to focus on that," said Amer.
After having watched The big hackyou will have a much better understanding of what tracking, collecting and selling data looks like, and how it can be used against individuals, communities and nations. Like this, The big hack is a modern horror story. The villain is Cambridge Analytica, yes, but also Facebook and all the systems that allow people to be secretly manipulated by the digital psychological clues they leave throughout their lives. It's terrifying because it's true.
More great cable stories
Source link
