User-downloadable personal data excludes the behavioral surplus that firms actually exploit.

Evidence

In the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in March 2018, Facebook announced it would expand the range of personal data that it allows users to download, but even these data remain wholly contained within the first text, composed largely of the information that users themselves have provided, including information that they have deleted: friends, photos, video, ads that have been clicked, pokes, posts, location, and so on. These data do not include behavioral surplus, prediction products, and the fate of those predictions as they are used for behavioral modification, bought, and sold. When you download your “personal information,” you access the stage, not the backstage: the curtain, not the wizard. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1545

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the surveillance-capitalism extraction framework built in earlier chapters; the stage-versus-backstage metaphor extends the asymmetry-of-knowledge theme. — connects to: Privacy and data-ownership debates miss why experience becomes behavioral data at all — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 731; Behavioral surplus is data used beyond improving search service quality — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 232
• SHARE: The curtain-versus-wizard download point is a crisp thing to send to someone working on data rights or digital privacy.

Broader Connections

• Privacy and data-ownership debates miss why experience becomes behavioral data at all #expands (0.82) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 731
• Behavioral surplus is data used beyond improving search service quality #expands (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 232