---
tags: [ecopolsoc, internet, surveillance-capitalism]
created: Monday, January 20, 2025
---

# 4dec6fe0_shadow_text

Surveillance capitalism creates two "electronic texts". The first is the
public-facing text which consists in the benefits conferred by the surveillance
capitalists' services, expressed in their self-regarding mission statements. The
"universe of information and connection [they] bring to our fingertips" (posts,
blogs, likes, photos, spreadsheets, music, tweets etc).

The first text is a sort of Trojan Horse, serving as the "supply operation" for
the second, _shadow_ text. Everything we contribute to the first text becomes a
target for surplus extraction via the shadow text. This is the ultimate purpose
of the services and is hidden from view and only for the purview of the
surveillance capitalists.

_In this text, our experience is dragooned as raw material to be accumulated and
analyzed as means to others' market ends. The shadow text is a burgeoning
accumulation of behavioural surplus and its analyses, and it says more about us
than we can know about ourselves. Worse still, it becomes increasingly
difficult, and perhaps impossible, to refrain from contributing to the shadow
text. It automatically feeds on our experience as we engage in the normal and
necessary routines of social participation._

_The Age of Surveillance Capitalism_ (2019): 185
