Market segmentation industrialized recognition and empathy as tools of attention capture
Evidence
And so, with the launch of Claritas, the liberating politics of recognition would attain its commercial correlative. Born of a wish for greater empathy and greater understanding of people from all backgrounds, the new system industrialized the project of finding out as much as possible about each and every one of us, not out of regard for anyone’s dignity, but so as to know precisely what would catch our attention and make us want things we never knew we wanted. — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 612
Categorization
- XREF: The dark inversion of ‘liberating politics of recognition’ connects to contemporary critiques of how personalization platforms co-opt identity politics, and to the reader’s surveillance literature. — connects to: Facebook patented emotion-detection software that images can classify into many feeling states — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 893; Psychographic segmentation broke mass-audience advertising by enabling message personalization — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 611; Advertising industrialized attention by converting it into a resellable commodity — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 24 (+4 more)
Broader Connections
- Advertising industrialized attention by converting it into a resellable commodity
#corroborates(0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 24 - Surveillance platforms weaponize empathy and belonging to herd behavior commercially
#corroborates(0.82) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1492 - Platforms exploit users’ natural empathy as a channel for behavioral tuning
#complicates(0.80) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 946 - Networks quantified audience attention as inventory sold by gross rating points
#expands(0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 489 - Human categorization is a universal navigational tool for social worlds
#qualifies(0.72)