Chapter 24: Exercises — Surveillance Capitalism and AI

Comprehension Exercises

Exercise 1: Behavioral Surplus Analysis Select a digital service you use regularly (social media platform, search engine, streaming service, e-commerce site). Identify all the behavioral data that service could collect from your interactions. Distinguish between data necessary for the service to function and behavioral surplus — data that goes beyond what the service requires. What predictions could be made about your behavior from the surplus?

Exercise 2: Prediction Market Mapping Trace the commercial chain from user behavior to advertising revenue for a specific platform of your choice. Who are the parties in each transaction? What product is being bought and sold at each step? Who are the "customers" and who is the "product" at each stage? Draw a diagram representing the relationships and transactions.

Exercise 3: Instrumentarian Power Identification For each of the following platform features, describe the behavioral modification it is designed to produce and how it achieves that modification without explicit commands or stated incentives: - a) The infinite scroll on a social media feed - b) The "like" button and visible like counts - c) Read receipts in messaging apps - d) Streak counters in language learning apps - e) "People you may know" recommendations

Exercise 4: Attention Economy Externalities The attention economy produces externalities — costs imposed on third parties who are not part of the transaction between platforms and advertisers. Identify at least five specific externalities that attention economy optimization produces. For each, identify who bears the cost and who captures the benefit.

Exercise 5: Workplace Surveillance Audit Your organization uses the following monitoring tools: email monitoring software that scans for specific keywords; a virtual private network that logs all internet traffic on work devices; productivity software that takes periodic screenshots; and time tracking software that requires workers to categorize all activities. For each tool: (a) identify what data is collected, (b) identify what inferences could be drawn from the data, (c) assess whether workers are likely to know about the monitoring, and (d) evaluate whether the monitoring is proportionate to legitimate business needs.

Application Exercises

Exercise 6: Targeting Architecture Analysis Facebook's advertising system allows advertisers to target users by: behavioral interests (inferred from likes and follows); custom audiences (matching advertiser customer lists to Facebook accounts); lookalike audiences (users similar to an advertiser's custom audience); life events (marriage, graduation, new baby); and location. For a hypothetical political campaign, describe how each targeting option could be used for: (a) legitimate voter outreach and (b) voter suppression or manipulation.

Exercise 7: Designing for User Wellbeing vs. Engagement You are head of product at a social media platform. Your engineering team presents two recommendation algorithm designs: Design A maximizes engagement (time on platform, clicks, shares) and is projected to increase revenue by 15%. Design B maximizes a composite measure of "user wellbeing" (including self-reported satisfaction, return visits over weeks not just hours, and absence of regret-signaling behavior) and is projected to increase revenue by 5%. Write a memo to the executive team arguing for one option, addressing the business, ethical, and regulatory dimensions of the choice.

Exercise 8: COPPA Compliance Review You are the privacy counsel for a mobile gaming company. Your flagship game is popular with users aged 10-15, though it is nominally rated for users 13 and older. The game collects: a device identifier, usage patterns (what levels are played, how long, when), purchase history, and social connections (who plays with whom). Conduct a COPPA risk assessment. What data requires parental consent for users under 13? What verification mechanisms would genuinely prevent under-13 data collection without consent? What changes to your data collection would you recommend?

Exercise 9: Smart City Privacy Governance A city government wants to deploy AI-powered surveillance cameras throughout the downtown area, with capabilities including license plate recognition, pedestrian flow analysis, and the option to activate facial recognition for specific investigations. Design a governance framework for this deployment that: (a) defines permitted uses, (b) establishes oversight and accountability, (c) protects civil liberties, (d) creates transparency for residents, and (e) establishes limits on data retention.

Exercise 10: Algorithmic Management Assessment You are an HR consultant brought in to assess the employee monitoring system at a customer service company. The system tracks: calls handled per hour, call duration, time between calls, customer satisfaction scores from post-call surveys, and adherence to call scripts assessed by natural language processing. Workers receive automated performance alerts when they fall below threshold on any metric. Assess the system against the following criteria: (a) proportionality, (b) transparency, (c) accuracy, (d) human review, (e) worker wellbeing, and (f) legal compliance. What changes would you recommend?

Case Analysis Exercises

Exercise 11: Facebook Business Model Analysis Based on Case Study 24-1, answer the following: - a) What is the economic relationship between Facebook's users and Facebook's advertisers? Who is the customer and who is the product? - b) What specific design features of Facebook's platform were designed to maximize behavioral data collection rather than user benefit? - c) How did Facebook's internal research on teen mental health create legal and ethical liability? What should the company have done differently? - d) What would Facebook's business model look like if behavioral advertising were prohibited by law?

Exercise 12: Amazon Warehouse Monitoring Analysis Based on Case Study 24-2, answer the following: - a) What specific monitoring metrics does Amazon use, and what is the stated business purpose of each? - b) What harms to workers are documented in the case, and what is the causal connection between the monitoring system and each harm? - c) Amazon argues that its monitoring systems improve operational efficiency that enables competitive pricing that benefits consumers. Evaluate this argument. What costs are externalized that the argument ignores? - d) Design an alternative performance management system that achieves Amazon's operational goals without the identified harms. What tradeoffs does your design require?

Exercise 13: Comparative Surveillance Systems Compare China's social credit system and the US commercial surveillance data economy on the following dimensions: - a) Who controls the data? - b) What uses are made of the data? - c) What mechanisms exist for challenging or correcting data? - d) What oversight and accountability mechanisms exist? - e) What are the most significant differences? What are the meaningful similarities?

Critical Thinking Exercises

Exercise 14: The Consent Illusion Some defenders of surveillance capitalism argue that users have consented to data collection by accepting platform privacy policies, and that this consent makes the data economy legitimate. Write a 500-word critique of this argument, addressing: (a) whether consent to privacy policies is meaningfully informed, (b) whether consent to platform terms is meaningfully voluntary, (c) whether consent given in one context legitimizes all subsequent uses of data, and (d) whether individual consent is an adequate mechanism for addressing collective harms.

Exercise 15: The Value Exchange Argument A common defense of surveillance capitalism is that users receive genuinely valuable services (free email, free social networking, free search) in exchange for their data. Evaluate this argument. What would the services actually cost if funded by subscription rather than advertising? Is the implicit transaction revealed to users? Do users have genuine alternatives? Does the value of the service justify the harms documented in this chapter?

Exercise 16: Regulatory Design Problem You are advising a government committee on comprehensive surveillance capitalism regulation. The committee has identified the following regulatory options: (a) prohibit behavioral advertising entirely, (b) require opt-in consent for behavioral advertising, (c) require opt-out mechanisms for behavioral advertising, (d) impose data minimization requirements limiting collection, (e) create a data fiduciary duty for platforms, (f) break up large platforms that dominate surveillance markets. For each option, evaluate the expected effectiveness, likely industry response, impact on users, and implementation challenges. Which combination would you recommend?

Exercise 17: Ethical Advertising Practice A marketing director presents a proposal to use AI-powered micro-targeting for a new product launch. The plan includes: psychographic profiling based on social media data, targeting users identified as experiencing financial anxiety, and A/B testing of messages framing the product as a solution to that anxiety. Evaluate the proposal against ethical standards. What elements are clearly problematic? What elements might be acceptable with modification? What alternative approach would you propose that achieves the marketing goal without manipulating vulnerable users?

Exercise 18: Bossware and Remote Work Your company transitioned to remote work during the pandemic and is considering implementing productivity monitoring software for remote employees. The software would track active application time, take screenshots every 10 minutes, and analyze keyboard and mouse activity. Draft both: (a) the business case for the monitoring system, and (b) the employee experience impact analysis. Then write a recommendation to management, including any conditions you would require if the system is implemented.

Synthesis Exercises

Exercise 19: Surveillance Capitalism Business Model Canvas Using a business model canvas framework, document the surveillance capitalism model for a major platform of your choice. Identify: key partners, key activities, key resources, value propositions (to users and to advertisers), customer relationships, channels, customer segments, cost structure, and revenue streams. Where in this model do the ethical tensions arise? What would a reformed version of the canvas look like?

Exercise 20: Alternative Business Model Design Choose a digital service currently funded by behavioral advertising (social network, search engine, email service, or news aggregator). Design an alternative business model that could provide equivalent or better service without behavioral advertising. Consider: subscription pricing, contextual advertising, public subsidy, cooperative ownership, data dividends, or hybrid approaches. Evaluate the viability of your alternative and identify what would need to be true for it to compete with the surveillance capitalism model.

Exercise 21: The Children's Digital Rights Framework The EU's Digital Services Act prohibits targeting advertising to minors and requires platforms to conduct risk assessments for their impact on minors. Design a comprehensive "children's digital rights" framework for a social media platform used by 13-17 year olds. What data should not be collected? What features should be modified or disabled for minor users? What parental controls are appropriate vs. excessive? How do you balance child protection with adolescent autonomy?

Exercise 22: Workplace Surveillance Policy Draft a comprehensive workplace surveillance policy for a professional services firm (legal, consulting, or financial). The policy should address: what is monitored, for what purposes, with what notice to employees, with what access to the results, and with what mechanisms for review and challenge. Consider both client confidentiality requirements that may justify some monitoring and employee privacy and dignity interests that constrain it. Include specific provisions for remote work monitoring.

Exercise 23: Power and Accountability in Data Markets Surveillance capitalism concentrates enormous power — economic, political, social — in a small number of companies. Analyze this power concentration along three dimensions: (a) market power (the ability to shape competitive dynamics), (b) informational power (the advantage conferred by superior access to behavioral data), and (c) political power (the influence over regulatory and political processes). For each dimension, identify what accountability mechanisms exist and what additional mechanisms would be appropriate.

Exercise 24: The Global Variation Problem Surveillance capitalism operates globally but faces very different regulatory environments in different jurisdictions. A platform that would face prohibitive regulatory requirements in the EU can operate largely unconstrained in the US and in many developing countries. Analyze the consequences of this regulatory fragmentation for: (a) users in different jurisdictions, (b) the competitive dynamics between privacy-compliant and non-compliant platforms, and (c) the prospects for meaningful global privacy protection.

Exercise 25: Ethics Washing Identification A major technology company has published a "Responsible AI" report describing its commitment to privacy, transparency, and user wellbeing. The report describes an internal ethics review process, a commitment to data minimization, a transparency report on government data requests, and a user wellbeing research program. Meanwhile, the company's primary business is behavioral advertising based on comprehensive tracking. Develop criteria for distinguishing genuine ethical commitment from ethics washing. Apply your criteria to this scenario. What additional information would you need to make a definitive assessment?