Wrapping up now. Thanks everyone for your questions, and there’s plenty more exploring to do. What strange encounters with algorithms have you had? Results that seem off, recommendations that surprise you, assumptions made about your browsing habits...

Thanks for resurfacing that piece, Adam. I think that’s one of the subtle foundations I loved about Ex Machina—data collection so plausible and grounded in our current technologies, with an interpretation and use taken to an extreme. I think it all comes down to leaving room for human interpretation and correction.…

All depends on the advertisers’ strategies to reach you. Products like lens solution and laundry detergent might have a lot of brand loyalty attached to them, so household staples companies spend their advertising dollars differently than advertisers with specialty products. And it probably depends on where you are…

Again, it all depends on what data you are worried about and who you are worried about keeping it from. GPS and cell tower data? Contact directories and friend lists? That’s all going through mobile apps and their advertising partners, no matter how ephemeral the content of the app itself, and in many cases they…

Ha! I’m curious about this dress now... but it’s probably from a site that uses retargeting technologies. No matter what your intent—in this case to make fun of it—this tech banks on the promise that you just might be interested in purchasing and keeps reminding you with that hope. Turns out, retargeted ads are…

Great question. That really depends on what details you are trying to protect, and which trackers you are trying to avoid (your employer, your family members, website owners, advertisers, data brokers, your internet service or mobile phone provider, your browser, the government, and so on...). The solution you choose…

Pretty specific! But it’s a great question, and likely has to do with ad retargeting and cookies. And also probably has to do with the parameters advertisers use to acknowledge that you’ve successfully bought an item. I covered “burning” in the series:

It’s certainly a delicate balance, but at this point when we’re talking about any digital technology, focusing on collection doesn’t get us far enough. Anything that’s a digitized transaction is going to leave some trail. The question then becomes what we do with that information. We haven’t gotten deep enough into…

That’s all going to depend on how Facebook weighs your various interactions with different people—how often you click on them, engage with their posts, like their images or comment on their feed items. Even hovering and reading their updates a little longer than other things in your News Feed could be a factor.…

Interesting. I’m curious what you think of the experience when you compare your feeds across accounts. Do you follow some of the same pages? Friend the same friends? Kind of like experimental controls or constants?

Thanks, John. Ghostery is interesting as a middleman. I’ve written about them before:

Great question. I covered this in a previous post. Sounds like those headphones aren’t getting “burned” after you purchase them.