Interesting read. But the repeated notion that surveillance capitalists are only taking from the people by selling off the behavioral surplus omits that fact they they are providing services that those people want. Yes, appearing to be free is a subterfuge for many who don't understanding what they are giving away. But for many others they feel it is a fair exchange for services they really want.
The article is going much farther than just targeted advertising - it talks about predicting and manipulating behaviour in general, and about power, power in the political and personal, such as the question of who we are and our values.
In combination with the article I read just before, the one about statehood in no-man's land, there is also the question of sovereignty raised. If our behavior can be predicted and manipulated by supranational companies, how much is a democracy - a state - still worth? (Note that state actors could of course do the same, though hopefully there is at least a semblance of legitimization.)
This is a very high price to pay, in this described world, and I don't think most are able to even start judging fairness here, or even care enough to try and see.
I must admit I have no idea what you're talking about. If people behave in a predictable way then that's what they do though they are free to change, one trusts. Where is the evidence for manipulation (aside from that exhibited by all entrepreneurs from the market stall holder upwards) and to what end? Google exists by selling advertising on behalf of disparate traders; customers will therefore make choices which will change according to prevailing circumstances. Meanwhile billions of people make largely un-tracked purchases ex internet. Others are tracked and so what? Amazon and ABE Books know my tastes in literature and are welcome to push suggestions my way. If there are enough of us (like me), perhaps they'll conspire with a publisher to create a literary treasure replete with right of center (UK-style) politics, small state, free market, low tax ideas of the kind I favor. Of course I'll have no option but to buy it!
It's hard to know when services are really wanted. One measure that absolutely does not capture information about the service being wanted is sales. Pure sales information fails to control for the neurological process that generated the decision to buy, and takes an incorrectly agnostic position that the business has no social obligation to care how that buy signal was generated in the customer's brain.
There are all sorts of ways to induce an impulse in someone which, if given the opportunity to engage their higher level thinking processes, would be described as "unwanted." Most often, the victim of such manipulation is unaware and could even mistakenly report later that the choice was made solely of their own volition. Others may rationalize later that it was "wanted" even if they didn't "do the wanting" at the moment of purchase.
But the existence of priming, SEO tactics, in-app currency manipulations, pay-for-pain-release, bank overdraft fees and holds on deposits designed to cause such fees, etc. all represent dark patterns (which benefit from data and consumer prediction) that are by definition based on an open acknowledgement that customers will be doing things they unequivocally don't want to do.
There is no one set of decision-making processes that "is me." There's the lizard brain me that often makes choices that the homunculus me disapproves of, and a whole mess of competing interests, distractions, and irrationalities in between. The mistake of saying that a consumer purchase choice is a clean signal of wanting is that you don't know which "them" did the wanting, and which "them" is allowed to approve / disapprove of it.
My general belief is that we should be skeptical. When someone enters into a purchase behavior that is impacted by advertising phenomena or data-driven optimizations on the order of how fast their eye saccades sweep over a monitor, we should heavily discount the degree to which that signals a valid want, and instead view it as an instance where the person was grifted out of money for a thing they didn't choose to buy and then primed to back-fill their account of their choice with a rationalization that maintains their volition.
In a very real way, this means that the more sales certain organizations accrue, the more direct evidence we have that they are not wanted or value-creative.
It's similar to seeing a very successful loan shark and saying, "well, if the loan shark is successful it must be because people wanted the loans." No, psychological pressures were used to convince someone to bear a risk and make a type of purchase they didn't want. The success of the loan shark is a direct testament to the value they have destroyed.
