Courts shield data companies from liability absent demonstrated economic harm

Evidence

This same coercive Requirimiento twist can be found in the lengthy, dense legal compacts associated with Alphabet-owned Nest thermostats. The terms-of-service and end-user licensing agreements reveal oppressive privacy and security consequences in which sensitive information is shared with other devices, unnamed personnel, and third parties for the purposes of analysis and ultimately for trading in behavioral futures markets, action that ricochets back to the owner in the form of targeted ads and messages designed to push more products and services. Despite this, courts have generally upheld companies’ claims that they bear no liability without a clear demonstration of economic harm to the consumer. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 742

Categorization

• QUESTION: What exactly counts as ‘economic harm’ here, and could emotional or dignitary injury ever trigger liability — worth chasing for a legal critique piece.
• XREF: Connects to Zuboff’s central thesis about behavioral futures markets and to broader corporate-liability debates in digital-economy and privacy law. — connects to: Large-scale health-data aggregation can escape existing legal medical protections — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 529; The mere possibility of harmful data use, not actual harm, curtails autonomy — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 498

Broader Connections

• Large-scale health-data aggregation can escape existing legal medical protections #exemplifies (0.82) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 529
• The mere possibility of harmful data use, not actual harm, curtails autonomy #expands (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 498