I have some general idea of how their algorithms work, or at least what they do. Google, Meta, Twitter, and the like are pretty much watching over my shoulder all the time. My “location services” – there’s a nice euphemism for the surveillance state – tell them where I am at all times. When I scroll down a page or click on a link, the big brothers know about it and are keeping a list of what I see and don’t see, what I like and don’t like. Based on that profile of places I go and things I see, they feed me memes and links and stories they’re sure I’ll like, whether I like it or not.
It’s a small price to pay for being able to access the answer to any trivia question in a matter of seconds.
Because of what their algorithms have collected, I see many ads for churches (note to that church in Arizona: you’re wasting your advertising money trying to get a guy in Indiana to show up at your church on Sunday morning). I also see links to quizzes about old cars – yes I am a sucker and I keep taking the quizzes even though the Great Cars of the 50s quiz shows photos of a 1962 Chevy Impala and a 1967 Dodge Coronet.
I mostly get why I see wht I see on my feed.
But I wasn’t sure why I got the link to the automatic chicken coop door.
Yeah, I clicked.
The ad begins with some pretty important questions, rhetorical as they are: Are you tired of rushing to the coop at the crack of dawn to let your hens out? Are you sick of getting soaking wet on winter nights to lock your chickens in their coop? Do you worry about whether directly driving openers (linear actuators) would crush your chickens when closing?
Like a good sawdust trail revival service, the site moves on to a testimony of the wonder-working effects of an automatic chicken coop door:
“This door made a huge difference in my life. Before, I couldn’t go on all-day trips, fishing, or visit my friends in the late afternoon because I had to be home at a certain hour to close the chicken coop. Sometimes I asked my friendly neighbors if they could do it, but I don’t want to bother them too often. This chicken coop door opens and closes automatically. I can do other chores now in the morning and have no worries. It works perfectly!”
The Q and A section goes on to tell about a daylight sensor that opens the door at dawn and closes it at dusk and how it won’t be tricked into opening by a yard light. “Can predators open my Automatic Coop Door and hurt my chickens?” one question asks. The answer is reassuring, “No. It would take a 100-pound raccoon to open this door after it has closed…and if you have raccoons that big, I wouldn’t be having chickens or small children.”
The clincher comes with this thought, “Automation and Security are our Top Priorities! Turn your chicken coop into a safe zone!”
Who wouldn’t want their chicken coop to be a safe zone? The automatic chicken coop door really is a technological marvel.
I was about to place my order ($49.99 – regular price $99.99) when I remembered we don’t have chickens or a chicken coop.
It turns out that Big Tech doesn’t know me as well as they think they do. Did they assume by my Indiana zip code that I’d be in the market for a high tech chicken coop door? Did they make an errant connection with my like of 1950s cars? Or maybe they took my reading of John 10 about the good shepherd and his care for his sheep to be an interest in farm animal welfare.
With all their sophisticated tools, the big brothers at big tech don’t know me at all. They never will.
Had they bothered to read all of John 10, however, they would have known about the one who really does know me. Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.” (John 10:14–15 ESV)
Life in the safe zone.