Platform profits come from harvesting user attention and selling it back to advertisers

Evidence

On the one hand, our searches – our interests, our questions, our clicking choices, the links that we establish or activate – give substance to Google’s marvellous intelligence, whose algorithm would be but an empty shell if we did not continually fill it up with our collective intelligence. Google lives off our active and reactive attention, which continually nourish and refine the effectiveness of the formal apparatus put at our disposal. On the other hand, Google tends increasingly to sell our attention, our needs to know and our search choices, to advertisers that the firm allows to short-circuit the effects of our common intelligence: if they appear at the top of the page, it is not (only) by virtue of their relevance, substantiated by our multiple clicks, but because they have paid millions of dollars for increased visibility regardless of our collective intelligence, which would place them much lower if it were allowed to organize itself freely. — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 43

Categorization

• DEFINE: Concretely defines the mechanism by which attention becomes the commodity in platforms like Google, splitting user attention into what builds the algorithm and what is sold to advertisers.
• XREF: connects to: Brands profit by monetizing user-generated word-of-mouth influence. — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 253; Business models now give goods away free in exchange for user attention.; Free digital services are paid for by users’ attention. (+18 more)

Broader Connections

• Platform profit comes from commodifying user data by-products rather than selling ads #qualifies (0.85) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 40
• AOL pivoted from ad-free service to monetizing its user base as an attention merchant #exemplifies (0.85) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 727
• Surveillance platforms extract behavioral data from users and sell predictions to advertisers #corroborates (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 297
• Mass-media profits derive from non-reciprocal attention exchange #corroborates (0.85) — Yves Citton, The Ecology of Attention, 251
• Advertising industrialized attention by converting it into a resellable commodity #expands (0.80) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 24
• Audience exploitation arises from users becoming commodities, not from literal work #corroborates (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 327
• Advertising converted attention into revenue by selling consumers a receding ideal #expands (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 225
• YouTube’s shift to pre-roll ads revealed the free-lunch trick of attention merchants #exemplifies (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 1087
• Advertising shifted from selling product qualities to selling user identity #expands (0.75) — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 550
• Algorithmic platforms made ad revenue independent of brand quality or gatekeeping #expands (0.75)