Internet platforms gained unprecedented power to manufacture user behavior

Evidence

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

Categorization

• XREF: Plumbs forward to Zittrain’s later, publicly validated concerns about algorithmic election manipulation post-2016. — connects to: Early web community pioneers worked deliberately to shape technology toward human connection — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 132; Platforms exceed most nation-states in network size and act as social infrastructures — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 131; Digital platforms hijack life into data whose insights are sold back to us (+10 more)
• SEED: The Zittrain ‘engineered election’ acknowledgment from 2014 versus what actually happened in 2016 could anchor an essay on foreknowledge and responsibility.

Broader Connections

• The internet functions as a factory producing the self as commodity #expands (0.85) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 18
• Ubiquitous networked computing constitutes an unprecedented form of power unlike prior totalitarianism #expands (0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1265
• Email’s adoption functioned as large-scale operant conditioning preparing users for later attention harvesting #expands (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 656
• Google’s patented user-profiling schema already enumerated behavioral surplus attributes by the early 2000s #corroborates (0.78) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1854
• The rise of personalized web consumption ended broadcasters’ power to compel attention #expands (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 921
• Branding constraints predate the internet and resemble platform algorithmic pressure #qualifies (0.72) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 203
• Internet communication reflects rather than transcends offline power relations #contradicts (0.72) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 58