The Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed only an antechamber of platform data mining

Evidence

It was as though a side deal by Facebook with independent data prospectors had accidentally left open a hole in the ground that allowed the general public, for the first time, to see clearly into an underground anteroom. There, in that anteroom, visible for all to see, was the entrance to social media’s real data mine, although few understood exactly what lay behind that subterranean door in Facebook’s exclusive domain, let alone the planetary scope of capitalism’s data mining. The long-anticipated “techlash” had begun but, as yet, without a map of the wider pattern of exploitation, whose traces had suddenly become visible. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 61

Categorization

• XREF: This ‘underground anteroom’ framing parallels the attention/surveillance school’s claim that data extraction drives platform power, and could be mapped against Zuboff’s surveillance-capitalism fixations. — connects to: Data extraction by platforms is far broader than the Cambridge Analytica scandal — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 60; Contemporary platform scandals obscure the deeper question of data appropriation for capitalism — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 40; Cambridge Analytica merely repurposed routine surveillance capitalist machinery toward politics — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 873 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Data extraction by platforms is far broader than the Cambridge Analytica scandal #expands (0.95) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 60
• Cambridge Analytica merely repurposed routine surveillance capitalist machinery toward politics #corroborates (0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 873
• The Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed a hidden data mine but no map of it. #exemplifies (0.90) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 61
• Contemporary platform scandals obscure the deeper question of data appropriation for capitalism #expands (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 40
• Data extraction principles predate social media by decades in globalized capitalism #expands (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 48
• Digital platforms hijack life into data whose insights are sold back to us #expands (0.75)
• Falling manufacturing profits drove capitalism toward data extraction via platform monopolies #expands (0.75) — Nick Srnicek, Platform Capitalism, 17