Google frames users’ unpaid data contributions as an investment in personalized services.

Evidence

Google’s location history system is a product of the corporation’s global mapping operations. Though active for over a decade, it was unveiled to the public only in 2015 as “Your Timeline,” a feature that “allows you to visualize your real-world routines.” The corporation calculated that any negative reaction to the volume and persistence of tracking revealed by Timeline would be mitigated by the value of users’ active contributions to their own stocks of behavioral surplus as they fine-tune the information, add relevant photos, insert comments, and so forth. This was represented as an individual’s investment in personalized services such as Google Now so that it might more effectively comb your e-mail and apps in order to push relevant traffic and weather updates, notifications, suggestions, and reminders. Location data is the quid pro quo for these services. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 764

Categorization

• DEFINE: Shows the mechanism by which surveillance capitalism rebrands the extraction of behavioral surplus as a reciprocal exchange — a core definitional move of the book.
• XREF: connects to: Free digital services are paid for by users’ attention.; Platforms extract data as a form of unpaid payment from users — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 128; Early Google ran a self-contained behavioral value reinvestment cycle treating users as ends — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 217 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Early Google ran a self-contained behavioral value reinvestment cycle treating users as ends #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 217
• Early Google reinvested all user behavioral data in improving its own services #exemplifies (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 214