The future of the web depends on the way we let it grow. How permissive are we with powerful corporations on data collection? On the internet, self-taught algorithms are threatening one of our human rights: privacy.

That’s why UNESCO had to raise awareness to politicians and the public, as well as the media, of the dangers of data exploitation, addressed in the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence that was about to be released. But how to generate interest for such a complex and abstract topic on a global scale?

When we “accept cookies”, what do we really accept?

What are the consequences? How much of our personal data is being collected and exploited? On the internet, you are what you watch. Every major platform feeds on you. Your data has become the most valuable resource on earth. Privacy is in danger and when UNESCO asked us to find a solution to raise awareness, we created The Cookie Factory.

A Chrome extension which crawls the web on the user’s behalf in order to organically replace their cookies with those of a fictive profile. The goal is to permit you to become anyone, to fool the system, and to show every internet user the impact of their data’s collection in a playful way.

The experience is based on your IP address and real time data, making each experience wherever you are in the world.

To renounce the abusive use of personal data and how it consists of a threat to our privacy rights, nothing’s better than a demonstration. The Cookie Factory extension is a playful way to show us how our personal data is collected and affects our navigation… without using our own data.

Instead, it creates and uses fictive data (by opening real web pages) to give the algorithms a different set of cookies. Once the profile is loaded, the users are invited to check out the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence

…knowing exactly what’s the problem is.

We decided to pay a tribute to the original web with an art direction based on pop-up windows, memes, and lo-fi design. This aesthetic reminds us of an underground, hacker spirit. We make everything completely modular and clickable — something that wouldn’t have been possible on a simple website. Every element is playable and independent, creating an impressive sensation of saturation and organic chaos. We developed more than 40 fictional identities based on location and real-time data, making each experience unique wherever you are in the world. The crawling experience opens more than hundreds of real web content such as articles, gifs, memes, youtube videos, or market places…anything that creates cookies. The extension even allows to create their own combination of cookies thanks to 80 available themes (158 185 764 of possibilities in total).

In total, The Cookie Factory and its message on the abusive use of personal data had a reach of 91M people. The extension was downloaded in 79 countries. In addition to 57M impressions on social media, we also had the media taking up the subject all over the world, from the New York Times to the Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, or Canal + and many podcasts and radio shows.

In late 2021, 193 member states signed the UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and on the 23rd of April 2022 the EU voted a series of laws designed to tighten rules on privacy and use of personal data.