AlgoYou

Inspiration

As AI becomes more integrated into our lives, the issue of AI ethics has never been more urgent. Online spaces are increasingly saturated with AI-generated content, and these outputs often reflect the biases of the companies and developers behind them. For a generation that relies heavily on social media, this creates a dangerous trap: we are shown only what algorithms think we want to see, while opposing perspectives are filtered out. We believe this is more than a technical flaw — it’s a societal risk. If algorithms decide what we consume, they quietly decide what we believe. We don’t want technology to control us; we want to control technology. Our generation’s most important demand is the freedom to choose our own algorithm, to encounter diverse opinions, and to form independent judgments. This vision comes from personal experience. While taking an AI ethics course, I was struck by how deeply bias shapes algorithmic systems. That realization pushed us to design a project that doesn’t just expose the problem but empowers users to take back control in a content-heavy world.

What it does

AlgoYou is a Chrome extension that tracks what you watch and search on platforms like YouTube and Google and translates it into a simple, bullet-pointed memo. This shows the patterns in your consumption and highlights how the algorithm might be nudging you in certain directions.. Beyond awareness, AlgoYou is a structured “memory” of your activity — automatically groups habits and themes, and offers internal access to manage this data and allows users to delete information they don’t want to influence their recommendations. This way, your browsing history isn’t just raw data; it becomes a tool for self-awareness and self-control.

In short, AlgoYou puts users back in charge of their algorithms. It shifts control away from hidden systems and empowers people to shape their own digital narrative.

How we built it

We built AlgoYou as a Chrome extension using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. To speed up development, we used Google AI Studio and fine-tuned prompts with Gemini to generate and debug code. We then connected everything through Chrome’s developer tools, focusing on turning raw browsing data into clear, user-friendly insights. Collaboration was organized through Google Docs and Google Meet, which kept our team aligned across multiple work sessions.

Challenges we ran into

One major challenge was that the extension does not have direct access to YouTube’s internal systems. This means we cannot yet delete or modify the data that YouTube uses to shape recommendations. Our current version can only generate reports for awareness. In the future, we plan to expand this by either integrating more closely with YouTube ( and other platforms ) or developing a way for the extension to interact with YouTube’s data controls, so users can truly manage what the platform remembers about their content consumption.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As we built AlgoYou, we walked away with many memories and accomplishments we are proud of. One of them is a working prototype of our idea. All of us had diverse backgrounds of skill level, whether it was with backend or frontend experience. We had limited knowledge on Chrome extensions, however, we worked together in supporting each other with researching information and overcoming any issues we encountered. We are proud of the efficiency and connection we developed as a team to create our prototype.

We also attended different workshops, such as the Jules workshop and the Google AI Studio workshop. From there, we were exposed to the different resources accessible to us. Taking inspiration, we tried using assistance from AI such as Jules to fix some functions in our files and debug. We are proud of taking advantage of all the help that we could in order to reach our goal.

What we learned

Throughout the process of this hackathon, we have learned many technical skills such as creating a Chrome extension, gathering data from user input, and outputting information based on multiple data sources rather than just one link. Besides technical skills, we learned how to work in a team with a diverse group with different skillsets while effectively delegating tasks.

What's next for AlgoYou

We want to continue the goal of personalizing our extension for the user. Here are future steps we would like to take:

1) Give it access to YouTube's internal so that it can delete or edit its report about us 2) Have AlgoYou give feedback based on the content you view, separate from the summary. This will help the user identify and eliminate content that might be harmful to them. 3) Integrate colorful UI interfaces to make the report more personable. 4) Include a chatbot to allow users to talk with the report and receive answers. This allows users to easily navigate through their watch history and any specific questions they have.
5) Expand to other social media platforms.