Personalization rhetoric makes surveillance attractive, and its critics get cast as irrational.
Evidence
The marketing ideology of personalization makes such tracking and surveillance seem attractive. Who after all would not want a service more geared to his or her particular wants and needs? The argument, very simply, is that personally targeted messages require prior information that can come only from … targeted surveillance! Yet evangelists for data-driven personalization still feel the need to defend this ideology aggressively, as when Acxiom, in a 2015 opinion survey, characterized acceptance of continuous data collection as “pragmatist” (fair enough) and opposition to it as “fundamentalist” (itself rather an extremist statement). — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 97
Categorization
- XREF: Mirrors the attention school’s critique that personalization serves advertisers, and the ‘pragmatist vs fundamentalist’ framing echoes moral-panic discourse in the reader’s library. — connects to: Surveillance capitalism constitutes a coup against the people disguised as personalization — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1627; New surveillance technologies are deliberately disguised in familiar forms to ease adoption. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 488; Surveillance is repackaged in the language of personal freedom to gain acceptance — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 80 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Surveillance is repackaged in the language of personal freedom to gain acceptance
#corroborates(0.95) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 80 - Surveillance capitalism constitutes a coup against the people disguised as personalization
#expands(0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1627 - Marketers justify deep personal tracking with personalization, but the logic is circular.
#expands(0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 413 - Self-branding normalizes surveillance and produces strategic, edited selves
#exemplifies(0.80) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 721 - New surveillance technologies are deliberately disguised in familiar forms to ease adoption.
#expands(0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 488 - Indignation is the necessary motivational force for challenging surveillance capitalism
#complicates(0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1653