Google’s data intimacy lacks the accountability that binds trusted professionals

Evidence

In fact, Varian’s notion of personalization is the precise opposite of the relationships with trusted professionals to which he refers. Doctors, accountants, and attorneys are held to account by mutual dependencies and reciprocities dictated by the extensive institutionalization of professional education, codes of conduct, and procedures for evaluation and review. Violation of these rules risks punishment in the form of professional sanction and public law. Google and its brethren in surveillance capitalism bear no such risks. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 799

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Milgrom’s law merchant — the recurring theme that institutions backing trust relationships (codes, sanctions, reputation mechanisms) are what make cooperation possible; here Zuboff shows their absence in surveillance capitalism.