Know how Facebook’s AI tracks and studies your activity with this free and open source tool
Have you ever wondered how does Facebook show information on your
News Feed based on your “likes” or social media interests or behaviors?
Well, Data Selfie,
a free and open source tool, is here to answer this question. It is a
Chrome extension that uses machine learning algorithms to analyse what
your Facebook usage says about your personality and learns about your
social media patterns, in order to provide you a personalized experience
tailored to your wants and needs.
Available for free, Data Selfie is 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.
To accomplish this, Data Selfie actually depends on the power of one
of the world’s best-known AI systems: Watson, the IBM-created cognitive
system.
Once downloaded, the app starts monitoring your Facebook
interactions. From every post that you “like,” to how long you spend
looking at a shared article down to your scrolling pace, every scrap of
information is analyzed and logged by the AI as it carries out its quest
to get to “know” you.
The extension also comes with a dashboard that gives insights of the data that you have liked, viewed, as well as inferences based on a combination of machine learning algorithms. Your aggregated Facebook activity is shown in a timeline that is appropriately broken down with color coding to focus diverse aspects about your data usage.
Data Selfie stores the data locally on your computer and not on external servers. It only sends anonymized data to the servers, which you can also export or delete. The creators of the tool also assure that your info is not used for anything else other than to inform you.
The code for this transparency tool is available on GitHub for developers to use. You can also get Data Selfie from the Chrome Web Store here.