Weak Agency and Vulnerability in Surveillance Capitalism

"The Age of Surveillance Capitalism" by Shoshana Zuboff. Copyright Profile Books.

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. 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

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 sophisticated, 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.” 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 disadvantage because of a fundamental gap in information we say they suffer from weak agency. Weak agency, also known as information asymmetry, 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.

Weak Agency Issues within Surveillance Capitalism

Surveillance Capitalism operates off the back of some of the most advanced technology known to humankind. Its processes and goals are by their very nature hard to understand and difficult to discover. There are several ways in which Surveillance Capitalism as a market suffers from weak agency issues due to a massive gap in knowledge between consumers and Surveillance Capitalists.

Intentional Information Asymmetry

The first way there is weak agency in Surveillance Capitalism is that information is intentionally hidden from consumers. From the start of Surveillance Capitalist practice it has been designed to be unknowable to consumers. Its practices were both concealed and nearly impossible to understand almost immediately from its inception at Google’s founding in 1998. A perfect example of the desire to conceal how Surveillance Capitalism works is that it wasn’t until 2009 that “the public first became aware that Google maintains our search histories indefinitely.” Of course, this is common knowledge today. Yet, the point persists that Surveillance Capitalists are not forthright in telling us the ways in which they collect information or how they intend to use it. This is not just personal analysis, former Google executive Douglas Edwards has openly spoken about the company's “culture of secrecy around aggressive data capture and retention.” Edwards has explained that Google’s founders “opposed any path that would reveal [their] technological secrets or stir the privacy pot and endanger [their] ability to gather data” the worst thing that could happen would be “arousing users’ curiosity with clues… about the reach of the firm’s data operations.” Google intentionally tried and tries to shroud its data collection and manipulation from us as consumers because it makes us worse resources for extraction. This practice is not just limited to Google either. It is standard practice in the Surveillance Capitalist industry. Surveillance Capitalism intentionally hides its ongoings from consumer view and understanding. This is an area where Surveillance Capitalism suffers from weak agency.

The Behavioral Futures Market

Another way Surveillance Capitalism suffers from weak agency is due to a time lag between consumer decisions and their ramifications. Satz explains that negative market outcomes from weak agency are "most likely in cases where there is a significant time lag between the initiation and the completion of a transaction." For example, if someone sold their kidney today it would be hard for them to predict if that was a terrible decision until much later down the road. This temporal discounting angle can be applied to Surveillance Capitalism. As Zuboff idnetified, the Surveillance Capitalist market is heavily relaint on using new data to feed machine learning algorithms which attempt to utalize the new data to drive further engagement. This process leaves a system in place where all information collected could eventually be deemed useful by a sufficiently sophisticated algorithm. Thus, even if someone were able to understand all of Surveillance Capitalism currently, there is no way for anyone to predict how information collected today could be used down the road. It is impossible for consumers to be aware of how their data and time will be used down the road. This situation also represents weak agency as consumers are fundementally unable to evaluate the consequences of their transaction.