I recall reading this piece years ago and being appalled. That Facebook can create shadow profiles of individuals who have never signed up was a real shift for me in terms of how I think about digital privacy. I think companies should be more transparent about this sort of data collection and give users more control over it, even if they’re not technically part of the platform.

This part absolutely shocked me. The notion that platforms can infer deep things about us — things like political views, gender identity or sexual orientation — simply by tracking what we click on or which people we follow feels maddeningly invasive. This has never occurred to me, how predictive simple online activity could be. That really makes me wonder a bit about our privacy online, and if users are actually realizing what is happening behind the curtains with their data.