Week 10 · Algorithms of Oppression

Are you the
customer
or the product?

Every time you open Instagram, YouTube, or Spotify, a transaction is happening. You just aren't the one paying.

Scroll to find out

Quick check

Test your instinct

Before we define anything, see what you already think.

When Instagram shows you content from an account you've never followed, what is it optimizing for?

The answer

A company pays Instagram $50,000 to advertise to users aged 18–24 in Minneapolis who have shown interest in sustainable fashion. What did they actually buy?

The answer

Spotify's Discover Weekly playlist feels like it knows you better than your friends do. What is it actually doing?

The answer

Platform
Capitalism

The four-step machine

Attention
→
Data
→
Prediction
→
Monetization

Step 1 — Attention

Step 2 — Data

Step 3 — Prediction

Step 4 — Monetization

This is not incidental to how these platforms work — it is the business model. Instagram, YouTube, and Spotify are not entertainment companies that happen to sell ads. They are data infrastructure companies whose product is a precisely profiled human audience, packaged and sold to the highest bidder. The entertainment is the mechanism of extraction.

Up next

How the machine actually works

A closer look at the feedback loop — and why it's so hard to step away from.