The short version of this post: Wake the fuck up and smell the maple nut crunch!
The somewhat longer version follows.
The Netflix “documentary”, “The Great Hack”, is a great beginning of something that will take years to be argued, debated, and (mis)understood. Thinking that Cambridge Analytica is the “bad guy”, and “it’s going to be alright now that we know” is all too comfortable (and all too easy).
One serious issue with this and the people that are in charge of making sure it doesn’t happen is that they don’t understand, don’t want to understand, or are actually paid by people who have as their prime interest that they do not understand.
How the United Nations (UN) and other organizations cannot consider ownership of personal information to be a basic and fundamental human right is beyond me, but it also goes to show how slowly the “democratic” machinery works and how easily the system is manipulated by those who understand.
Getting clowns elected as “the ruler” of a nation, or deeply influencing referendums one way or the other, while sinister and non-democratic, is arguably, less dangerous than standing in the way of science in, perhaps, the most important question of our time; the climate debate.
When “data points” can be used to, in the best interest of fossil energy companies, manipulate people and nations to prevent science, common sense, and logic to have its way … we’re truly skating on thin ice; and, it’s melting.
Oh, and you seriously don’t think Google (and others) aren’t doing the same thing? Bwahahaha … that’s good comedy right there.
“War Pigs” and “The Dogs of War” (look them up) have more truth to them than we’d like to think.
The Great Hack (Netflix), IMDB:
www.imdb.com/title/tt9358204