The Great Hack (Netflix)

[RandoEFC+]

Watched this this evening on Netflix. I know we have a Netflix documentary thread but I think due to the Trump/Brexit involvement in the story, we could get some serious opinions here so probably worth it's own thread.

Essentially, the documentary is about Cambridge Analytica, and generally follows the stories of two former employees who testified against the firm, a man who filed for the data that was gathered from his Facebook account to be released to him, and the Guardian journalist Carol Cadwalladr who made Cambridge Analytica her obsession.

The documentary sheds light on the history of Cambridge Analytica in various elections but is mostly set in the context of the 2016 US election.

My major takeaway is that it's frightening how easy it is to manipulate people by controlling what they see on Facebook. Obviously influencing elections by using data that should be protected is a massive moral issue, but some of the stuff on how Russia used Facebook to turn Americans against each other is even worse really because we're not far away from countries using data against other countries to incite violence and even wars.

Cambridge Analytica is now gone, but the brains behind it didn't face any legal ramifications, at least not publicly. Only the CEO type people, the business bods and faces of the company were the ones who took the fall. The actual mathematicians and psychology experts behind the success of what they did are still out there and will no doubt be snapped up by someone else sooner rather than later.

Anyway, a fairly interesting documentary with some shocking bits and pieces in there. Would recommend a watch.

[Dr. Gonzo]

I've heard good things about this, but I've heard it also makes you want to delete your facebook ASAP (although I already deactivated my account a while back).

[Mel81x+]

Watched it and as a person that did some really stupid things for clients during the GDPR mess its truly amazing how unsafe companies are with data they have stored either through their websites or on their networks. The ability for anyone with half a brain and some PERL knowledge to get so much out of a site and its visits is amazing. Part of the blame really just falls on lack of education on how to safeguard yourself from data theft and its improper usage but watching CA do what it did and what countries can do to each other is terribly frightening.

There was a post in the AI thread on here about how there is a text AI builder that can auto-fabricate news based on parameters and some of it is total garbage but with enough data it was able to produce some very real sounding stuff. 

[IgnisExcubitor]

4 hours ago, Mel81x said:

Watched it and as a person that did some really stupid things for clients during the GDPR mess its truly amazing how unsafe companies are with data they have stored either through their websites or on their networks. The ability for anyone with half a brain and some PERL knowledge to get so much out of a site and its visits is amazing. Part of the blame really just falls on lack of education on how to safeguard yourself from data theft and its improper usage but watching CA do what it did and what countries can do to each other is terribly frightening.

There was a post in the AI thread on here about how there is a text AI builder that can auto-fabricate news based on parameters and some of it is total garbage but with enough data it was able to produce some very real sounding stuff. 

I am going to watch this on the weekend. 

I know a lad who works for Congress IT cell. It would be interesting to see how they worked. I know CA really upped their game in the beginning, considering they vastly improved the party's social media presence. But they ran out of steam in the end.