Hacking The Great Hack

I just finished watching a one hour, fifty-minute Netflix documentary about how Cambridge Analytica influenced the 2016 US election and the Brexit campaign in the UK. It is excellent and entertaining viewing. If you have a Netflix account, login and search for “The Great Hack.”

The show goes behind the scenes with former employees of Cambridge Analytica who have come forward to testify about what the company was doing. The story is pretty grim. We all need to know how we are being manipulated by the big media companies who collect and control all our data without informing us about how it is being used. We must collectively work to solve what I think is one of the greatest threats to our future freedom.

However, I want to take the show to task for one glaring omission: they never examine the money behind Cambridge Analytica. That story is one I dealt with in two blog posts in 2017. I would recommend you to read them in order. First, is “Big Data” HERE. Second, there is “Mercer Millions” HERE. Robert Mercer furnished much of the financial backing for Cambridge Analytica and several other political operations supporting right-wing political operations. In the nearly two hours of The Great Hack Robert Mercer’s name was never mentioned and his daughter is mentioned once in passing. Perhaps Netflix is afraid of being sued by Robert Mercer. I think it is time that the big money behind the manipulation be brought to the fore.