Cambridge Analytica merely repurposed routine surveillance capitalist machinery toward politics
Evidence
“We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles,” Wylie admitted, “and built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons.” His summary of Cambridge Analytica’s accomplishments is a précis of the surveillance capitalist project and a rationale for its determination to render from the depths. These are the very capabilities that have gathered force over the nearly two decades of surveillance capitalism’s incubation in lawless space. These practices produced outrage around the world, when in fact they are routine elements in the daily elaboration of surveillance capitalism’s methods and goals, both at Facebook and within other surveillance capitalist companies. Cambridge Analytica merely reoriented the surveillance capitalist machinery from commercial markets in behavioral futures toward guaranteed outcomes in the political sphere. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 873
Categorization
- XREF: Challenges the mainstream framing that Cambridge Analytica was an anomaly or scandal; connects to Zuboff’s thesis that such operations are routine. — connects to: The Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed a hidden data mine but no map of it. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 61; Cambridge Analytica’s actual data efficacy was oversold but its scandal catalyzed real awareness; The Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed only an antechamber of platform data mining — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 61 (+2 more)
- SEED: Angle: the ‘scandal exceptionalism’ narrative — when an outrage-inducing practice turns out to be merely the routine surface of a much larger system.