Throughout its two seasons, HBO’s Westworld has trotted out no shortage of bad guys, from robot gunslingers to mad inventors to dialog that sputters and clunks. There’s literally a Man in Black. But as the plot unfolds, the catalytic evil of the park has turned out to be something far less futuristic than far-reaching theories would imply. It’s the privacy policy.

If you don’t watch Westworld, or if the plot has understandably spun your head beyond comprehension, a very, very quick recap: A company called Delos operates a fantasyland where wealthy guests dress up in Wyatt Earp cosplay and commit generally terrible acts against lifelike automaton “hosts.” The creator of the robot masses imbues them with sentience; they rebel, kill a lot of people, and general chaos ensues. Also, there are samurai. And Anthony Hopkins. Honestly, it’s wild.

While the first season meticulously built the world of the park, this latest run of episodes has taken a step back to explore not just the fact that it exists, but why. The answer, hinted at in bits and pieces amid various scenes of slaughter and familial angst, turns out not to be obliterating the Turing test, but to collect data from the world’s wealthiest sci-fi tourists, for still nebulous but certainly nefarious ends. Delos has been tracking its visitors for years, ultimately knowing more about its guests than they do about themselves.

Think of Westworld, then, as a living, breathing incognito window.

The parallels to the current climate—Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, yes, but also Equifax, Securus, Google’s data slurping, Amazon’s facial recognition, the thousands of data brokers you’ve never heard of and never will, on and on—first materialized in this season’s premiere. Bernard, a host that until recently believed it was human, asks cutthroat corporate overlord Charlotte Hale: “Are we logging records of guests' experiences and their DNA?”

The answer turns out to be yes; in fact, as it turned out in the season’s penultimate episode, Delos monitors guests' brain activity throughout their stay with sensors embedded in their complimentary cowboy hats. (About which, some questions: What if the guests don’t wear their hats? Or if they take them off? Or swap them? What about guests in the other parks, like Shōgun World and The Raj, that don’t lend themselves to millinery? Do the mysterious unannounced Delos parks include Kentucky Derbyland, or Royal Weddingville, for maximum cranial coverage?)

A perfect distillation of the park’s purpose, in fact, came a few months ago, in episode two. “Nothing here is real. Except one thing: the guests. Half of your marketing budget goes toward trying to figure out what people want, because they don’t know,” argues William, the Man in Black as a young man, to his cranky billionaire father-in-law in his pitch to buy the park outright. “But here they’re free. Nobody’s watching. Nobody’s judging. At least that’s what we tell them. This is the only place in the world where you get to see people for who they really are.”

Think of Westworld, then, as a living, breathing incognito window.

The echoes to the privacy morass of 2018 are, not surprisingly, fully intentional. At the Tribeca Film Festival in April, two days before the season premiere, Westworld cocreator Jonathan Nolan ditched subtext for text. “Facebook ostensibly is a way for you to connect with people, and that’s not their business at all,” said Nolan. “Their business is to sell you shit, and also read your mind. It turns out you are the product. Not coincidentally these two companies, Google and Facebook, are two of the leading investors in AI. So that felt relevant to our show. It’s a separate business model. And it’s one that lends itself to delicious reinterpretation, for sure.”