Podcast Summary: "You Are Being Tracked, Evaluated and Sold: An Analysis of Digital Inequalities"

LSE: Public Lectures and Events
Date: September 26, 2017
Host: Mike Savage
Main Speaker: Prof. Beverley Skeggs
Discussant: Dr. Sita Ganjiragaran
Technical Lead: Simon Yule

Episode Overview

This episode explores the pervasive ways our digital lives—particularly via Facebook and broader social media—are tracked, evaluated, and sold, creating and deepening digital inequalities. Prof. Beverley Skeggs presents research findings from her project on how the monetization of digital intimacy, friendship, and everyday interactions fuel a vast, opaque economy of data commodification. A lively discussion follows, featuring cutting observations about the impact on privacy, democracy, and social justice, as well as an engaged audience Q&A.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Digital Economy of Surveillance and Value Extraction

• Unprecedented Surveillance: Users are tracked, evaluated, and auctioned in real time, every fraction of a second.
  • "120 milliseconds is about a third of... the time it takes to blink your eye. And bids are currently being made as you sit there for access to your data—up to 50 billion times a day." (06:00, Skeggs)
• Profiles and Potential: Facebook assembles vast profiles—not just current demographics, but network potential.
  • "Even if you're, say, a student on a loan, they check your network of friends and assess your likely future. They're trading you on your potential." (09:11, Skeggs)
• Not Only Commodities—Also Surveillance Tools: Data is sold not just for advertising, but also to governments for surveillance.
• Machine Learning at Scale: Algorithms carry out the tracking and trading, learning and experimenting constantly, with little human oversight.

2. The "Rhythms of Interaction" Project—Methods and Surprises

• Research Approach:

  • Custom-built Facebook app/Firefox plugin collected behavioral and advertising data from real users.
  • Tracked not just Facebook activity, but cross-site tracking via trackers/ad exchanges (Rubicon, etc.).
  • Visualizations showed the often-invisible "gray matter" of surveillance—advertising and tracking layers hidden beneath visible user interactions.
  • Even users with ad-blockers and tech expertise couldn’t escape being tracked.

• Notable Finding: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE ON FACEBOOK FOR FACEBOOK TO TRACK YOU.

  • "Even if you sign off, any site... that has a Facebook widget is tracking you. Once they've got you, they've got you for life." (19:10, Skeggs)

• Legislative and Judicial Barriers:

  • Efforts to challenge Facebook's practices (e.g., Belgian government's court action) failed due to jurisdictional loopholes.

3. Data Brokering and Deep Profiling

• Data Brokers (Experian, Axiom): Facebook buys traditional offline data to supplement online profiles.
  • "Axiom brags it has, on average, 1,500 pieces of information on more than 200 million Americans." (30:45, Skeggs)
• Opaque, Uncontested Categorization: Ordinary people have no visibility or recourse about how they're classified and what the consequences are.

4. Digital Inequalities by Design

• High Net Worth vs. Vulnerable Targeting:
  • The wealthy are matched with luxury products; others are targeted for debt, payday loans, or surveillance.
  • "What do [platforms] sell to [lower net worth individuals]? Mainly, they sell them debt." (33:57, Skeggs)
• Algorithmic Reproduction of Social Inequality:
  • Ad targeting, network analysis, and predictive analytics further entrench existing social and economic disparities.
• State and Political Use:
  • Data and algorithms are used for political advertising, fake news, and even direct state surveillance (e.g., India's Aadhaar database) (41:00–44:00, Skeggs).

5. Psychological and Cultural Effects

• Behavioral Shaping:
  • Platforms like Facebook aren’t just collecting data, but actively shape user behavior ("FOMO", compulsive checking, shaping narratives).
  • "It makes us perform our subjectivity in particular ways... literally shaping how we perform ourselves online." (46:00, Skeggs)
• Resignation and 'Necessary Evil':
  • Even those aware feel powerless ("a contract with the devil"; "ideology without ideas").

6. Questions of Resistance and Regulation

• Limits of Individual Action:
  • Ad-blockers and privacy tools are largely ineffective; meaningful resistance must be collective and structural.
  • "Personal measures are not that effective... Obfuscation and blocking would only work if massive numbers used them, and even then, algorithms can adapt." (60:00, Simon Yule)
• Failures and Challenges of Regulation:
  • Legal structures are outpaced by technological change; attempts at nationalization or regulation raise their own problems.
  • "Every time you think of a solution—nationalization, regulation—they don’t work. Government itself is often complicit." (61:35, Skeggs)

7. Possibilities and Hope

• Imagining Alternatives:
  • Calls for imaginative, cross-disciplinary, collective approaches—such as building local, collectively controlled digital infrastructure (e.g., Detroit Community Technology Project) (73:23, Sita).
• Need for Radical Rethinking:
  • Considering distributed internets, new non-personal-data-driven models, and systemic reform.
  • "Do we ultimately need to reform or replace capitalism in order to beat this?" (80:35, Audience Q)
  • "We definitely need a new model... What was your soul? Every move you make, every breath you take—we'll make money out of you." (83:55–85:29, Skeggs)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the scale of surveillance:
  "By the time you've finished reading this sentence, you will have been tracked and traded." (08:00, Skeggs)

• On Facebook’s monopoly and reach:
  "You do not have to be on the Facebook platform for Facebook to track you... Once they've got you, they've got you for life." (19:10, Skeggs)

• On algorithmic social sorting:
  "Matching is making divisions between people who can buy things and people who cannot... For me, that's the basis of inequality." (66:14, Skeggs)

• On resignation:
  "All our participants... defined Facebook as a 'necessary evil'... a contract with the devil." (49:55, Skeggs)

• On resistance:
  "Individual tools don't have a big structural impact... What matters is collective action." (71:52, Simon Yule)

• On future directions:
  "We really do need to think about how we try and take it back in some way, but it's incredibly difficult." (83:55, Skeggs)

Audience Q&A (Select Segments & Insights)

Apple's Role & Effectiveness

• Apple may offer relative privacy, but derives much of its wealth from problematic practices elsewhere; and it's still deeply embedded in surveillance capitalism.

Dating Apps & Gentrification

• Dating apps are lucrative and also engines for trading personal data; there's growing concern about data/ads shaping labor, housing, and urban development.

Blockchain & Cryptocurrencies

• Potential for change, but much of the infrastructure may be absorbed into dominant systems, furthering financialization rather than subverting it.

On Agency and Alternatives

• Successful resistance likely requires community-scale or structural changes; e.g., building local internets, investing in public digital infrastructure.

On the Algorithms' Failures

• Sometimes targeted ads are comically off—algorithms only need to work well enough to convince advertisers, not always the end-user.

Timestamps for Critical Segments

• Introduction & Context – 00:00–03:17
• Skeggs: Scope of Data Surveillance – 03:17–12:50
• Methodology: Rhythms of Interaction Project – 12:51–21:23
• Data Brokers & Profiling – 28:00–33:57
• Inequality and Targeting of Debt – 33:57–38:00
• Political Consequences & Fake News – 41:00–46:00
• Behavioral and Social Effects – 46:00–51:43
• Discussion: Sita’s Response – 51:56–59:22
• Limits of Personal Resistance – 59:23–64:00
• Audience Q&A: Privacy, Resistance, Future Models – 64:16–85:32
• Closing Thoughts – 85:32

Tone and Language

• The tone is engaged, provocative, urgent, and sometimes darkly humorous.
• Prof. Skeggs is incisive, accessible, and often delivers with sharp wit.
• Dr. Sita alternates between analytical skepticism and hopeful encouragement for collective alternatives.
• Audience contributions range from anxious to acerbic, matching the mood of both concern and critical curiosity.

Summary

This episode is a powerful and disturbing deep dive into the entanglement of attention, data, value, and inequality in the era of digital capitalism. The speakers use rigorous empirical evidence and vivid visualization to expose how tracking and ad targeting turn social relationships and subjectivity into commodities, reinforcing and redesigning social inequalities. While tech fixes and privacy tools may offer personal comfort, real solutions will require imaginative collective action, public accountability, and a rethinking of both digital and economic infrastructures.