Digital platforms hijack life into data whose insights are sold back to us

Evidence

Data colonialism is, in essence, an emerging order for the appropriation of human life so that data can be continuously extracted from it for profit. This extraction is operationalized via data relations, ways of interacting with each other and with the world facilitated by digital tools. Through data relations, human life is not only annexed to capitalism but also becomes subject to continuous monitoring and surveillance. The result is to undermine the autonomy of human life in a fundamental way that threatens the very basis of freedom, which is exactly the value that advocates of capitalism extol. … These fundamental transformations of human life have dramatic consequences for the social world too. They enable what we call social caching, a new form of knowledge about the social world based on the capture of personal data and its storage for later profitable use. As social relations are thus transformed, we see the emergence of the Cloud Empire, a totalizing vision and organization of business in which the dispossession of data colonialism has been naturalized and extended across all social domains. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 32 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

But while the old media are themselves the advertising vehicles, the kind of value creation that has provoked criticism of ‘surveillance capitalism’ feeds on commercially exploitable information that is randomly ‘snagged’ by other services and in turn enables individualized advertising strategies. Through these processes steered by algorithms, social media are also promoting a further advance in the commodification of lifeworld contexts. — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 40 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

The Facebook study’s publication evoked fierce debate as experts and the wider public finally began to reckon with Facebook’s—and the other internet companies’—unprecedented power to persuade, influence, and ultimately manufacture behavior. Harvard’s Jonathan Zittrain, a specialist in internet law, acknowledged that it was now possible to imagine Facebook quietly engineering an election, using means that its users could neither detect nor control. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 941 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Platforms reconfigure human life to continuously produce extractable data streams. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 45; Billions now organize personal lives around data-dependent platform infrastructures — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 585; Data brokers erase the boundary between offline and online activity — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 202 (+15 more)

Related

• Billions now organize personal lives around data-dependent platform infrastructures (similarity 0.90)
• Platforms reconfigure human life to continuously produce extractable data streams. (similarity 0.89)
• Platform data extraction operates as a continuous cache-gathering of social life. (similarity 0.89)
• Platforms are the principal infrastructure through which capitalist data appropriation is normalized (similarity 0.87)
• Data capture for profit is a recent, quality-of-life-altering development (similarity 0.87)
• Data extraction under the Cloud Empire mirrors historical colonial extraction patterns (similarity 0.86)
• Data colonialism extracts human life as data for profit through data relations. (similarity 0.86)
• Data relations extend capital extraction beyond labor into all social life (similarity 0.85)
• Contemporary platform scandals obscure the deeper question of data appropriation for capitalism (similarity 0.85)
• Platform profit does not come from exploiting labor but from commodifying social life itself (similarity 0.84)
• Data extraction by platforms is far broader than the Cambridge Analytica scandal (similarity 0.83)
• Datafied connection is sold as solidarity while actually substituting platform-mediated service (similarity 0.83)
• Data colonialism extends neoliberal ideology by appropriating all of life, not just non-market spheres. (similarity 0.83)
• Surveillance platforms extract behavioral data from users and sell predictions to advertisers (similarity 0.83)
• Continuous human data collection is not rational life-organization but a commercial fix. (similarity 0.83)

Broader Connections

• Platform profit comes from commodifying user data by-products rather than selling ads #corroborates (0.85) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 40
• Data colonialism extracts human life as data for profit through data relations. #corroborates (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 32
• Cloud capital shatters individuals into manipulable fragments of data #qualifies (0.80) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 660
• Human life as organized through data is the new direct input of capitalism #expands (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 160
• Surveillance platforms extract behavioral data from users and sell predictions to advertisers #qualifies (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 297
• Internet platforms gained unprecedented power to manufacture user behavior #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 941
• Platforms steer how people value themselves through reputation metrics and gamified data extraction. #expands (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 406