When Big Data Falls Into the Uncanny Valley

"What is it about my data that suggests I might be a good fit for an anorexia study?" That's the question my friend Jean asked me after she saw this targeted advertisement on her Facebook profile:

Image: Facebook/Massachusetts General Hospital, via The Atlantic

She came up with a pretty good hypothesis. Jean is an MIT computer scientist who works on privacy programming languages. Because of her advocacy work on graduate student mental health, her browsing history and status updates are full of links to resources that might suggest she's looking for help. Maybe Facebook inferred what Jean cares about, but not why. Read more...