Personal Data Spaces: An Intervention in Surveillance Capitalism?
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Published:
Dec 5, 2017
Keywords:
Personal data spaces, Surveillance Capitalism, surveillance capitalism, Dataveillance, dataveillance, Personal Data Space, data subjectivity, Data Subjectivity, agency, Agency, big data
Main Article Content
Abstract
Personal data spaces, or PDSs, are emerging intermediary services that allow users control over the sharing and use of their data. In this article, the surveillance capitalism model, which describes how businesses employ datafication to create value in the digital economy, is used to contextualize PDSs. Focusing on three PDS services, I analyze the social imaginaries they represent, paying attention to the increased agency over data they offer users. This proposed agency reflects the efforts of PDSs to intervene in, but not counter, surveillance capitalism. While their goal is to intensify datafication by increasing the quality and specificity of data that businesses can employ, their interventions also change the structure of data flows, allowing users to more directly benefit from datafication. PDSs envision their users as data-supplying and benefit-demanding market participants, active subjects in value creation instead of passive objects of data extraction. PDSs view themselves as platform providers that facilitate data exchanges and rely on market mechanisms to ensure beneficial services are developed for users to choose from.
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References
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Mai, Jens-Erik. 2016. Big Data Privacy: The Datafication of Personal Information. Information Society 32 (3): 192–99. doi:10.1080/01972243.2016.1153010.
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Rieder, Bernhard, and Guillaume Sire. 2013. Conflicts of Interest and Incentives to Bias: A Microeconomic Critique of Google’s Tangled Position on the Web. New Media & Society 16 (2): 195–211. doi:10.1177/1461444813481195.
Rochet, Jean-Charles, and Jean Tirole. 2003. Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets. Journal of the European Economic Association 1 (4): 990–1029. doi:10.1162/154247603322493212.
Solove, Daniel J. 2013. Privacy Self-Management and the Consent Dilemma. Harvard Law Review 126 (7): 1880–1903. Accessed July 11, 2017. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2171018.
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Taylor, Charles. 2004. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
U.S. Senate. 2013. A Review of the Data Broker Industry: Collection, Use, and Sale of Consumer Data for Marketing Purposes. U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce Science and Transportation. Accessed July 11, 2017. http://1.usa.gov/1vlVESn.
van Dijck, José. 2014. Datafication, Dataism and Dataveillance: Big Data between Scientific Paradigm and Ideology. Surveillance & Society 12 (2): 197–208. Accessed July 11, 2017. http://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/datafication.
Yeung, Karen. 2016. ‘Hypernudge’: Big Data as a Mode of Regulation by Design. Information, Communication & Society 20 (1): 1–19. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2016.1186713.
Zuboff, Shoshana. 1985. Automate / Informate : The Two Faces of Intelligent Technology. Organizational Dynamics 14 (2):5–18. doi:10.1016/0090-2616(85)90033-6.
Zuboff, Shoshana. 2015. Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization. Journal of Information Technology 30: 75–89. doi:10.1057/jit.2015.5.
Zuboff, Shoshana. 2016. Google as a Fortune Teller. The Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism. Frankfurter Allgemeine, March 5. Accessed July 11, 2017. http://www.faz.net/-gsf-8eaf4.
Acquisti, Alessandro, Laura Brandimarte, and George Loewenstein. 2015. Privacy and Human Behavior in the Age of Information. Science 347 (6221): 1–4. doi:10.1126/science.aaa1465.
Andrejevic, Mark. 2014. The Big Data Divide. International Journal of Communication 8: 1673–89. Accessed July 11, 2017. http://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/view/2161.
Andrejevic, Mark, and Kelly Gates. 2014. Big Data Surveillance: Introduction. Surveillance & Society 12 (2): 185–96. Accessed July 11, 2017. http://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/bds_ed.
Baack, Stefan. 2015. Datafication and Empowerment: How the Open Data Movement Re-Articulates Notions of Democracy, Participation, and Journalism. Big Data & Society 2 (2). doi:10.1177/2053951715594634.
Callon, Michel, and Fabian Muniesa. 2005. Peripheral Vision: Economic Markets as Calculative Collective Devices. Organization Studies 26 (8): 1229–50. doi:10.1177/0170840605056393.
Castells, Manuel. 1996. The Rise of the Network Society. Vol. 1 of The Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishing.
Chignard, Simon. 2013. A Brief History of Open Data. Paris Innovation Review. Accessed July 11, 2017. http://parisinnovationreview.com/2013/03/29/brief-history-open-data/.
Clarke, Roger. 1988. Information Technology and Dataveillance. Communications of the ACM 31 (5): 498–512. doi:10.1145/42411.42413.
Cozy Cloud. 2017. Cozy Cloud website. Accessed July 11, 2017. http://cozy.io.
Crain, Matthew. 2016. The Limits of Transparency: Data Brokers and Commodification. New Media & Society. doi:10.1177/1461444816657096.
de Montjoye, Yves-Alexandre, Erez Shmueli, Samuel S Wang, and Alex Sandy Pentland. 2014. openPDS: Protecting the Privacy of Metadata through SafeAnswers. PloS One 9 (7). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0098790.
Degli Esposti, Sara. 2014. When Big Data Meets Dataveillance: The Hidden Side of Analytics. Surveillance and Society 12 (2): 209–25. Accessed July 11, 2017. http://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/analytics.
EU. 2016. Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the Protection of Natural Persons with Regard to the Processing of Personal Data and on the Free Movement of Such Data. Official Journal of the European Union L119/1.
European Commission. 2016. An Emerging Offer of ‘Personal Information Management Services’ - Current State of Service Offers and Challenges. European Commission Report. Accessed July 11, 2017. http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=40118.
European Data Protection Supervisor. 2016. EDPS Opinion on Personal Information Management Systems. Towards More User Empowerment in Managing and Processing Personal Data. Opinion 9 / 2016. Accessed July 11, 2017. https://edps.europa.eu/data-protection/our-work/publications/opinions/personal-information-management-systems_en.
Evans, David S, and Richard Schmalensee. 2011. The Industrial Organization of Markets with Two-Sided Platforms. In Platform Economics: Essays on Multi-Sided Businesses, edited by David S. Evans, 2–29. Competition Policy International. Accessed July 11, 2017. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974020.
Gawer, Annabelle. 2014. Bridging Differing Perspectives on Technological Platforms: Toward an Integrative Framework. Research Policy 43 (7): 1239–49. doi:10.1016/j.respol.2014.03.006.
Gerlitz, Carolin, and Anne Helmond. 2013. The like Economy: Social Buttons and the Data-Intensive Web. New Media & Society 15 (8): 1348–65. doi:10.1177/1461444812472322.
Gillespie, Tarleton. 2010. The Politics of ‘Platforms.’ New Media & Society 12 (3): 347–64. doi:10.1177/1461444809342738.
Gurevich, Yuri, Efim Hudis, and Jeannette M. Wing. 2016. Inverse Privacy. Communications of the ACM 59 (7): 38–42. doi:10.1145/2838730.
Hagel, John, and Jeffrey Rayport. 1997. The Coming Battle for Consumer Information. Harvard Business Review 75: 53–65.
Helmond, Anne. 2015. The Platformization of the Web: Making Web Data Platform Ready. Social Media + Society 1 (2). doi:10.1177/2056305115603080.
Ho, Jinwon and Tang, Rong. 2001. Towards an Optimal Resolution to Information Overload: An Infomediary Approach. GROUP '01 Proceedings of the 2001 International ACM SIGGROUP Conference on Supporting Group Work: 91–96. doi:10.1145/500286.500302.
Kelty, Christopher M. 2008. Two bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software. Durham: Duke University Press.
Kitchin, Rob. 2014. The Data Revolution: Big Data, Open Data, Data Infrastructures and Their Consequences. London: SAGE.
Laudon, Kenneth C. 1996. Markets and Privacy. Communications of the ACM 39(2): 92–104. doi:10.1145/234215.234476.
Mai, Jens-Erik. 2016. Big Data Privacy: The Datafication of Personal Information. Information Society 32 (3): 192–99. doi:10.1080/01972243.2016.1153010.
Mayer-Schönberger, Viktor, and Kenneth Cukier. 2013. Big Data. A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. London: John Murray.
Meeco. 2017. Meeco website. Accessed July 11, 2017. http://meeco.me.
MyData. 2016. MyData 2016 Conference website. Accessed July 11, 2017. http://www.mydata2016.org.
Noam, Eli M. 1995. Privacy in Telecommunications: Markets, Rights, and Regulations. Part III: Markets in Privacy. New Telecom Quarterly 4Q95: 51–60.
OpenPDS. 2017. OpenPDS website. Accessed July 11, 2017. http://openpds.media.mit.edu.
Poikola, Antti, Kai Kuikkaniemi, and Harri Honko. 2015. MyData – A Nordic Model for Human-Centered Personal Data Management and Processing. Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications. Accessed July 11, 2017. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-243-455-5.
Richards, Neil M., and Jonathan H. King. 2014. Big Data Ethics. Wake Forest Law Review 29. Accessed July 11, 2017. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2384174.
Rieder, Bernhard, and Guillaume Sire. 2013. Conflicts of Interest and Incentives to Bias: A Microeconomic Critique of Google’s Tangled Position on the Web. New Media & Society 16 (2): 195–211. doi:10.1177/1461444813481195.
Rochet, Jean-Charles, and Jean Tirole. 2003. Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets. Journal of the European Economic Association 1 (4): 990–1029. doi:10.1162/154247603322493212.
Solove, Daniel J. 2013. Privacy Self-Management and the Consent Dilemma. Harvard Law Review 126 (7): 1880–1903. Accessed July 11, 2017. https://ssrn.com/abstract=2171018.
Spiekermann, Sarah, Alessandro Acquisti, Rainer Böhme, and Kai-Lung Hui. 2015. The Challenges of Personal Data Markets and Privacy. Electronic Markets 25 (2): 161–67. doi:10.1007/s12525-015-0191-0.
Srnicek, Nick. 2017. Platform Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Taylor, Charles. 2004. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
U.S. Senate. 2013. A Review of the Data Broker Industry: Collection, Use, and Sale of Consumer Data for Marketing Purposes. U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce Science and Transportation. Accessed July 11, 2017. http://1.usa.gov/1vlVESn.
van Dijck, José. 2014. Datafication, Dataism and Dataveillance: Big Data between Scientific Paradigm and Ideology. Surveillance & Society 12 (2): 197–208. Accessed July 11, 2017. http://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/view/datafication.
Yeung, Karen. 2016. ‘Hypernudge’: Big Data as a Mode of Regulation by Design. Information, Communication & Society 20 (1): 1–19. doi:10.1080/1369118X.2016.1186713.
Zuboff, Shoshana. 1985. Automate / Informate : The Two Faces of Intelligent Technology. Organizational Dynamics 14 (2):5–18. doi:10.1016/0090-2616(85)90033-6.
Zuboff, Shoshana. 2015. Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information Civilization. Journal of Information Technology 30: 75–89. doi:10.1057/jit.2015.5.
Zuboff, Shoshana. 2016. Google as a Fortune Teller. The Secrets of Surveillance Capitalism. Frankfurter Allgemeine, March 5. Accessed July 11, 2017. http://www.faz.net/-gsf-8eaf4.