Social media free products are extraction lures, and users are raw-material sources, not products

Evidence

Surveillance capitalism’s products and services are not the objects of a value exchange. They do not establish constructive producer-consumer reciprocities. Instead, they are the “hooks” that lure users into their extractive operations in which our personal experiences are scraped and packaged as the means to others’ ends. We are not surveillance capitalism’s “customers.” Although the saying tells us “If it’s free, then you are the product,” that is also incorrect. We are the sources of surveillance capitalism’s crucial surplus: the objects of a technologically advanced and increasingly inescapable raw-material-extraction operation. Surveillance capitalism’s actual customers are the enterprises that trade in its markets for future behavior. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 43

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharply distinguishes surveillance capitalism’s ‘customers’ (enterprises buying predictions) from users (raw-material sources), correcting the widespread ‘you are the product’ slogan.
• XREF: Resonates with Cole’s social capital note that benefits accrue to others, and with Marxist read of commodified labor in Against Postmodernism. — connects to: Data is a social by-product, not a natural substance, captured by distant third parties — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 287; Free media products conceal the total absence of consumer choice — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 604; Users are raw material suppliers whose behavior yields predictive products indifferent to their fate — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 216 (+2 more)
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to the grafting article’s logic of extraction disguised as empowerment — users lured by ‘hooks’ just as trees are ‘used’ as infrastructure.

Broader Connections

• Users are raw material suppliers whose behavior yields predictive products indifferent to their fate #corroborates (0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 216
• Under surveillance capitalism the product is behavioral data, not the goods themselves #expands (0.85) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 418
• Platform profit comes from commodifying user data by-products rather than selling ads #corroborates (0.82) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 40
• Free media products conceal the total absence of consumer choice #expands (0.72) — Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic…, 604