Maciej Cegłowski, easily one of the best writers and thinkers on privacy, on the problems with big data:

Instead of relying on algorithms, which we can be accused of manipulating for our benefit, we have turned to machine learning, an ingenious way of disclaiming responsibility for anything. Machine learning is like money laundering for bias. It’s a clean, mathematical apparatus that gives the status quo the aura of logical inevitability. The numbers don’t lie.

His six proposals to restore sanity sound exactly right.