Netflix’s ‘The Great Hack’ Documentary Exposes Social Media’s Dark Influence on US Elections, Leaving Fans Unsettled

When Netflix released The Great Hack, stirring up the digital crowd became inevitable, but no one anticipated the spine-tingling unease that prevailed like an indelible aftertaste. This 2019 documentary dove deep into the Cambridge Analytica scandal and how individual data became the new currency of manipulation. It arrived during the peak of debates around internet privacy and meddling in the US elections and landed with an unsettling timeliness that has persisted among fans.

On Reddit, fans admitted they had been shaken by the experience after seeing the movie. The sentiment of most threads displays awe mixed with fear of the dangers of private data invasions. Some compared the movie to a psychological thriller, which lets viewers see “data as more than just numbers on a screen.” Warning fellow bingers to expect the worst, because all the surprises had a basis in reality, some admitted that it made them question the safety of their own online discourses. 

Scarier than a horror movie, The Great Hack centers on whistleblowers, reporters, and those caught up in the maelstrom of data company Cambridge Analytica’s activities, from directors Karim Amer and Jehane Noujaim. With the central characters, Brittany Kaiser, David Carroll, and investigative reporters who exposed the deception web, the movie follows how social media likes and quizzes powered targeted political campaigns worldwide. Fans, upon watching the documentary, have clutched their pearls in an instant because by the time the personal data gets stolen, the irreversible damage is already done.

The movie happens to be too real to be ignored, as information traded in codes triggers fan responses that express fear cloaked in awe.

The Great Hack scares the keyboards out of fans

Reddit users have dissected why the film left them in a cold sweat. The documentary not only decodes the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but it recreates it as a suspense drama. Fans noticed how it brings data to life, something which is deemed as the most valuable resource in the world, wondering how it is used to “build psychological profiles” to be abused at any time. What kept viewers up all night was the sneakiness of it all. Personal data, collected stealthily and used as a weapon in elections, as most people remained unaware, fans said it is “Mind blowing how are data is being used,” and is equally “horrifying.”

However, there are also a bunch of viewers who believe, “Cambridge Analytica is a total joke,” and that it had not ultimately moved the US election numbers in 2016. But most fans pointed out, “What’s wild is that it hasn’t gotten better since then,” acknowledging that it made them cautious about each digital footprint they leave. One even commented on the documentary’s overall appeal, saying that it “feels like a thriller more than a history lesson.” The Great Hack haunts long after the end credits, not with ease but with questions regarding the vulnerability of privacy in a hyper-digital world, also evident in Netflix’s wild collection of cyberbullying documentaries. ^[1]

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