If Genius Analyzed the Virtual Learning Ad Haunting My Algorithm

"Yes you can!"

The YouTube algorithm keeps feeding me the same ad from online learning company Connections Academy, over and over again.

I think this is what happens when you turn off some of Google’s optional data-mining and it has to rely on only the automatic data-mining you can’t turn off. When I wanted to find the ad again for this piece, all I had to do was briefly turn my Google data-mining settings back on, click on the Connections Academy website, and wait for the tracking cookies or whatever to do their work.

Connections Academy is owned by Pearson, a one-time “family-owned construction firm” that has morphed into a huge British publishing (though they have evidently phased out the paper-and-ink side of their educational publishing) and all-purpose “education” conglomerate. Pearson is powerful and influential enough that, according to a Politico piece from a few years ago, some states don’t even seek out competing bids for the expensive services Pearson offers, and Pearson has arranged co…