ABSTRACT

Today social media platforms play a central role in the surveillance of our networked societies. While many actors are responsible for this situation, the providers of the platforms (mostly private corporations) have a particular responsibility. This chapter is focused on the providers and the economic factors that govern their actions. It argues that network effects and the providers’ subsidizing strategies in multisided markets have given them the opportunity as well as the incentive to enable surveillance of end users. On the example of Facebook the chapter illustrates how, as a result, providers are rendering end users and their behavior transparent while keeping their own practices nontransparent to the end users.