Kashmir in the Feed

From job interviews to ad targeting, Kashmiris are discovering how deeply the web already knows them.

- Maroof Lone

Sarah had told no one. And yet, as she scrolled through her Instagram one morning in Baramulla, her feed seemed to know the secret she hadn't shared: she was expecting a child.

Every few posts, there it was: ads for baby bottles, prenatal vitamins, sleep tips for new mothers. “It felt eerie,” said Sarah, a 32-year-old schoolteacher. “I hadn't typed the word pregnant anywhere.”

What gave her away wasn't a single search or status update. It was a series of small, seemingly harmless actions: a couple of late-night queries on morning sickness, a few seconds spent hovering over parenting forums, a click on a blog about first-trimester diets.

Those gestures, barely thoughts, were captured, stored, analyzed, and interpreted. They painted a picture, told a story, and did it more quickly than she ever imagined.

Across Kashmir, that sense of eerie recognition is becoming common. Students, teachers, professionals, and homemakers are discovering how their online behaviour is silently being turned into data.

That data, in turn, becomes a reflection of who they are, what they believe, what they want, and sometimes, what they fear.

What's surprising people isn't that the internet tracks them. It’s how accurate, invasive, and predictive that tracking has become.

Everything we do online - swipe on a screen, pause over a reel, like or comment - leaves behind what technologists call a digital footprint.

This footprint is constantly being mapped, measured, and molded into a version of us that exists on the servers of companies we've never heard of.