If Big Data is so spookily effective at knowing every aspect of my character, I just have one question: why does Facebook keep trying to sell me £80 slippers?
Rare are my visits to Facebook or Instagram that are not rewarded with an advert for what look like overpriced espadrilles. I doubt I have ever spent more than £15 on slippers or bought them anywhere but Marks and Spencer. I have never googled them and can think of nothing in my online activity to suggest that, when it comes to slippers, I might be susceptible to the last word in style. (In fact, this product has ugly detachable outdoor soles so they don’t so much say “last word in style” as “middle-aged guy who goes out in his slippers”.)
To be fair to the data-science geniuses, Facebook does not always offer me overpriced slippers. Sometimes it offers me overpriced earplugs or the chance to buy a mindfulness app. We are supposed to believe that the sophisticated algorithms built upon data-scraping and machine learning now know us better than our closest friends. Yet you would not need more than 15 minutes in my company to mark me down as a guy unlikely to spend £80 on slippers or splash out on a mindfulness app.