Today using the Internet implies primarily using digital platforms,
that actively participate in the co-construction of social life. In this scenario, users
have often been depicted as powerless, subjected to exploitative commercial practices, and
as having internalized their condition of surveilled and datafied individuals. However,
little attention has been paid to how individuals make sense of algorithms in their everyday
life and how exert their agency while using platforms. Furthermore, little is known
regarding how researchers can actively elicit critical reflections regarding structures of
datafication, thereby helping individuals increase their awareness and data literacy. This
paper contends that auto-ethnographic diaries, elaborated following a critical pedagogical
approach, can be valuable to investigate user practices and how algorithms are enacted in
everyday life by those practices. Furthermore, a critical pedagogy approach can raise
awareness among individuals regarding processes of pervasive datafication and surveillance,
thereby being a way to redistribute social value to the public while doing social research
and a practice of independence and resistance to algorithmic surveillance.