The Internet stopped feeling as utopian to me as it did when I started using it when Friendster and MySpace and, the nail in the coffin, Facebook took off. What was great about the Internet was that no one knew who or what you were in the real world, you were only known by what you had to say about whatever the topic at hand was. The Internet went from freeing you from any kind of identity to tying you more tightly to one. but that happened a long time before what this article is about.
I never had a Friendster or MySpace account but still do have a FB that I have not looked at in months. I have been amazed at LinkedIn's data mining capabilities. As one "good" example", even though we had not talked in 25 years and have no mutual friends, it recommended a connect to my first serious girlfriend which was nice even though it said we had 2 mutual friends who she did not know. No fucking idea how they figured that connection out. On another note, I happened to remember a schoolmate who I did a project with once and that is about it and so I googled her. Soon thereafter LinkedIn sent me a recommendation to connect even though I do searches like that in Incognito. It sniffs my google searches and gmail for sure. And being able to see who looks at my LinkedIn profile is kinda weird as well.