Free digital services are paid for by users’ attention.

Evidence

On the one hand, our searches – our interests, our questions, our clicking choices, the links that we establish or activate – give substance to Google’s marvellous intelligence, whose algorithm would be but an empty shell if we did not continually fill it up with our collective intelligence. Google lives off our active and reactive attention, which continually nourish and refine the effectiveness of the formal apparatus put at our disposal. On the other hand, Google tends increasingly to sell our attention, our needs to know and our search choices, to advertisers that the firm allows to short-circuit the effects of our common intelligence: if they appear at the top of the page, it is not (only) by virtue of their relevance, substantiated by our multiple clicks, but because they have paid millions of dollars for increased visibility regardless of our collective intelligence, which would place them much lower if it were allowed to organize itself freely. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 43 (#expands, via linked claim)

Gross also founded FreePC, which, while it lasted, gave people low-end Compaq computers in exchange for detailed personal information and the right to monitor their Internet surfing and buying habits. His NetZero was a “free” Internet service that depended on ads and similar tracking practices, at least until its collapse. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 877 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

As Tiziana Terranova has been analysing for more than a decade, the internet today offers capitalism a vast hunting ground which is teeming with FREE LABOUR. It freely provides the labour for ‘building websites, modifying software packages, reading and participating in mailing lists, and building virtual spaces’: ‘free labour is the moment where this knowledgeable consumption of culture is translated into excess productive activities that are pleasurably embraced and at the same time often shamelessly exploited’. The magic of electrified attention presents us with boundless and virtually free riches; we work on these riches often with enchanted and generous jubilation; businesses have learned how to take advantage of this, profiting financially from our enchantment. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 197 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Business models now give goods away free in exchange for user attention.; Platforms extract free labor from users in exchange for recognition and perks; Digital capitalism profits from unpaid pleasurable user activity. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 197 (+16 more)

Broader Connections

• Free hardware and internet access were traded for personal data and tracking rights #exemplifies (0.95) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 877
• Platform profits come from harvesting user attention and selling it back to advertisers #expands (0.95) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 43
• Digital capitalism profits from unpaid pleasurable user activity. #expands (0.92) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 197
• Platforms extract free labor from users in exchange for recognition and perks #expands (0.90)
• Users freely did unpaid labor that increased Facebook’s own value #exemplifies (0.90) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1011
• Free Wi-Fi kiosks disguised as equity tools siphon data even from non-users. #exemplifies (0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 714
• Google frames users’ unpaid data contributions as an investment in personalized services. #exemplifies (0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 764
• AOL pivoted from ad-free service to monetizing its user base as an attention merchant #exemplifies (0.90) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 727
• Voluntary user content creation constitutes unpaid labor enriching platform owners #expands (0.88) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 338
• The attention merchant model’s magic is delivering real value that seems free #qualifies (0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 892
• An everything app charges vendors rent and extracts free labor from users #expands (0.85) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 513
• Measuring attention as data enables treating it as a monetizable resource #expands (0.85)
• The first consumer online services were conceived as attention-reselling advertising platforms. #exemplifies (0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 703
• Commercial exploitation of idle attention is a recent development #qualifies (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 65
• Online services had to lure users away from television to win attention. #expands (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 696