Weak Agency in Surveillance Capitalism

"The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff. The book which first identified this emerging market.

Surveillance Capitalism is an emerging market identified by Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff. The market centers around the use of data collection to better influence consumers in the market. What is unique about Surveillance Capitalism is how it uses data gathered from its consumers to better influence these consumers and to market to them more effectively. Users of Surveillance Capitalist technologies are both the consumers - they consume the content provided- and the products - their attention is for sale. Over the course of Surveillance Capitalism’s history the level of consumer awareness surrounding Surveillance Capitalist practices has been minimal. There exists some concerns around the ethical appropriateness of this market transaction, consumer time and attention for money, if the consumers themselves are not aware of the transaction they are making. This level of information asymmetry is called “weak agency” and can be an indicator of unethical market practices.

Surveillance Capitalism

This section will cover how Surveillance Capitalism opperates.

What is Surveillance Capitalism?

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism identifies how the internet and tech companies have defined a fundamentally different model of economic progress. Shoshana Zuboff identifies two fundamental tenets of this new market: it is in the business of "behavioral modification," and it relies on machine learning and information gluttony to generate the most predictive models possible.

The most successful companies today are the ones that excel in predicting and influencing general consumer behavior. These "Surveillance Capitalists" are experts in collecting, interpreting, and utilizing behavioral data to promote sales and behavior. This unseen market - which places behavior as the main product - has come to dictate vast amounts of the economy. These companies are in the business of altering our perception. Their product is "the gradual, slight, imperceptible change in your own behavior and perception."

What makes Surveillance Capitalism Successful?

Surveillance Capitalists' success in behavioral alteration stems from two sources: the volume of data they collect and the ability of algorithms to interpret this data into valuable behavioral influencing data. The world's largest tech companies gain data through each user interaction with their product. This data is fed back into their machine learning algorithms to generate even more accurate behavioral data, which is used to drive further engagement, thus providing more data for the algorithms. This positive feedback loop of data collection generates a more engaging user experience which in turn encourages more user interaction that provides these firms even more behavioral data. Zuboff explains that the world's largest companies now have realized that the more data they have, the more predictive they can make their models. To that end, if tech companies have data they don't know what to do with, it still might be useful someday. All they need is a machine learning algorithm that figures out how to use this extra data. This desire for data in all forms has generated a "behavioral futures market" where companies value all data types regardless of their current use. The result of this behavioral futures market is the mass practice of information gluttony. Collect as much information as possible because it may be useful someday with the right model. The success of this market stems from the ongoing ability to collect data and input it into sophistacted, growing algorithms.

Weak Agency

Debra Satz "Why Some Things Should not be for Sale" Copyright: Oxford University Press

Debra Satz in her work "Why Some Things Should not be for Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets" lays out criteria for ways in which markets can fail. She enumerates four factors which may indicate a market is suffering from noxious business practices. One such factor is called Weak Agency.

What is Weak Agency?

In her book, Debrah Satz explains that some “markets arise in circumstances in which some parties have poor information about the goods they are exchanging, or in which some parties are not direct participants in the exchange but depend on others’ decisions.” The issue with these markets is that they usually result in negative outcomes for those lacking crucial information. In such markets, where consumers are at a disadvanntage because of a fundemantal gap in information we say they suffer from weak agency. Weak agency, also known as information assymetry, is often seen as a problem we ought to fix. For example, all fifty states have passed so-called “lemon laws” which regulate the sale of used automobiles. These laws exist because most Americans have little working knowledge of automobiles, and could easily be swindled by a cunning mechanic trying to pawn off a car which would break down in a matter of weeks after purchase. Here we see that as a society we have decided we are morally opposed to gross abuses of information asymmetry to swindle consumers. As a result there are countless regulations on the books to prevent this type of market failure in a wide variety of industries. Much like the market for "lemons," Surveillance Capitalism also has aspects which suffer from weak agency.

Future Projects

Patent drawing for a Braille-friendly Xbox controller. Copyright: Microsoft & US Patent and Trademark Office

Meta, previously known as Facebook, has reported that they are working to develop system-wide auto-captioning for their Oculus Virtual Reality (VR) headsets. The auto-captioning feature would work for all applications and video games installed on the headset.

Virtual Reality (VR) headset developer Pimax has reportedly partnered with eye-tracking technology developer Tobii to include eye-tracking as a standard in all of their future headsets.

In 2019, Xbox filed a patent application for a new controller that would feature Braille inputs and outputs for the visually impaired. The controller would feature paddles on the back of the controller that could produce vibration cues as well as allow the user to input text commands.

Community Concerns

As video games continue to grow in popularity, conversations about the technical, creative, and safety implications of video game accessibility happen more often. Topics of these conversations often include, but are not limited to:

Inaccessibility Health Risks

Video games that contain sequences of flashing images or lights or repeated patterns have the potential to incur seizures in those with photosensitive epilepsy. Advocacy for the commonplace use of detailed warning labels in the game and the ability to turn off flashing lights in the game’s settings has been the topic of many accessibility discussions. In some cases, experts suggest people with photosensitive epilepsy avoid specific video games or video games entirely.

Video games in the first-person perspective, including those in Virtual Reality (VR), have been reported to cause motion sickness in some players. Some players have called for developers to include the option to change visual settings such as framerate, camera sensitivity, and motion blur.

People who experience sensory processing problems, such as those with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), or Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), may experience sensory overload when playing video games. In a 2019 study, researchers found a majority of participants with ASD experienced some form of sensory distress when playing a video game. Common triggers for their distress include jarring sounds, excessive camera movement, and gameplay difficulty. Researchers of different studies found that video games can provide increases in attention and decreases in impulsivity (which can reduce the risk of sensory overload), for those with Sensory Processing Disorder and ADHD, however.

Gameplay Difficulty Debate

The difficulty of a video game can depend on the player’s experience, skill, and ability. Motivation to play the game and having a pleasant experience can often depend on whether or not the game meets the player’s difficulty needs. Because difficulty is subjective, this can mean that some players may opt out of a gaming experience due to an undesirable difficulty level. This phenomenon has led to debates surrounding gameplay difficulty within gaming communities.

Introductory screen for Celeste’s Assist Mode. Copyright: Extremely OK Games, Ltd. & Matt Makes Games Inc.

Some players argue that difficulty in video games is a part of the accessibility discussion. Within this perspective are those who believe that video games should require an “easy mode,” or a gameplay setting that reduces the overall difficulty. Others believe that the difficulty issue in the context of video game accessibility has broader solutions than an “easy mode” alone. This perspective argues that video game developers can produce creative solutions to reduce overall difficulty while still maintaining a balance with the level of challenge for those who may need it. Some cite the 2018 platformer game, Celeste, as achieving this premise with its Assist Mode.

Other players believe that video game difficulty is not a matter of accessibility, rather that it is a matter of fairness to the player. There are also some players that believe that gameplay difficulty and feeling challenged can be important aspects of the gaming experience. Within this perspective are those that believe that overcoming challenges is part of what makes playing video games enjoyable and those that believe that gameplay difficulty is part of the developer(s)’s creative, or intended, vision. Similarly, some argue that gameplay difficulty can contribute to the game’s narrative in a significant way, citing Hollow Knight as an example.

Some video game developers have responded to this debate with their own opinions regarding the compatibility of accessible gameplay difficulty and their creative vision for their video game. Development director of God of War, posted on Twitter in 2019 that, “[a]ccessibility has never and will never be a compromise to my vision.” In a 2022 PlayStation interview with Hidetaka Miyazaki, developer at FromSoftware Games, a studio known for difficult titles such as the Dark Souls series and the more recent Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, he said, regarding his studio’s gameplay difficulty, “our approach … is to encourage the player to overcome adversity” and “we try to design the games to make the cycle of repeatedly trying to overcome these challenges enjoyable in itself.”