Ever thought about how Facebook collects all the data it has to feed you with all the content it presumes you’ll like and keep you coming back for more? Well, now there’s an app that will answer these questions. Available for free, Data Selfie is really an open-source Chrome extension that helps you discover how machine learning algorithms track and process your Facebook activity, and gain insights about your personality and habits.
Scary tool discloses exactly how Facebook’s AI monitors and reviews your activity
To achieve this, the nifty extension monitors your Facebook interactions for patterns and then crunches the collected data into insightful reports.
Data Selfie essentially tracks your activity – what you check out, how long you look at it, what you like, everything you click along with what you type – and then applies natural language processing and machine learning algorithms from IBM Watson and the University of Cambridge to turn this data into insight.
The extension comes with a handy dashboard that shows your aggregated Facebook activity in a timeline, conveniently broken down with color coding to spotlight different aspects about your data usage.
In addition to this, the Data Selfie dashboard includes understanding of what posts you’ve spent most time on – both for friends and liked pages. In a creepily fascinating way, the extension also uses predictive analytics to guess stuff like your political affiliations as well as shopping and nutrition preferences.
In order to avoid ill-intended individuals from acquiring the information it collects about you, Data Selfie keeps your details locally – only on your own machine – and never stores anything on external servers.
As part of its initiative to enhance internet transparency, creator Data X has made the code for Data Selfie available on GitHub for curious developers to peruse.
Start learning how Facebook’s algorithms collects and interprets your activity patterns, and get Data Selfie from the Chrome Web Store here.
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