ABSTRACT
As we face an online environment of ubiquitous surveillance, it is worth noting the commercial forces that have provided the rational for tracking users, combining databases, and personalizing the web. Personalization is when online content conforms to the prior actions of the user in an algorithmically generated feedback loop. Examples of personalization include Google’s personalized search, behavioral advertising, featured recommendations on https://Amazon.com" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Amazon.com, taste preferences on Netflix, headlines on Yahoo! News, Twitter Trends, and Facebook’s News Feed rankings. The personalized web can provide convenience, efficiency, interestingness and relevance to users who are served with content that they themselves help to generate. However, there may be unintended consequences, biases, and costs including social discrimination, political polarization, coercion, and the erosion of personal autonomy and human volition. The chapter uses a political economy approach to identify operational logics and unintended consequences for users.
