Only legal compulsion can force access to prediction data

Evidence

Facebook makes clear that the shadow text is not available to users, despite the promotion of its self-service download tools that promise to give users access to their personal data retained by the company. Indeed, the competitive dynamics of surveillance capitalism make the shadow text a crucial proprietary source of advantage. Any attempt to breach its content will be experienced as an existential threat; no surveillance capitalist will voluntarily provide data from the shadow text. Only law can compel this challenge to the pathological division of learning. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1544

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s Milgrom reading on extralegal contracting — the shadow text as proprietary private information that only institutional coercion can penetrate; also to general questions of platform data portability rights. — connects to: Data relations can operate through brute necessity with zero consent. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 138; User refusal to share data, not technical limits, is the core obstacle to prediction — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 248; Individual data-rights enforcement cannot succeed without collective action — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1548

Broader Connections

• User refusal to share data, not technical limits, is the core obstacle to prediction #contradicts (0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 248
• Individual data-rights enforcement cannot succeed without collective action #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1548