Meshes of Surveillance, Prediction, and Infrastructure: On the Cultural and Commercial Consequences of Digital Platforms

Digital platforms like Spotify, Netflix, and YouTube rely on mass data collection, algorithmic forms of prediction, and the development of closed digital systems. Seemingly technical and trivial, such operational and infrastructural features have both commercial and cultural consequences in need of attention. As with any other kinds of infrastructure, the surveillance practices and digital ecosystems that are now installed and solidified will have long-term effects and will be difficult to challenge. We suggest that the cultural and commercial ramifications of such datafied infrastructural developments can be unpacked by analyzing digital platforms—in this case Netflix—as surveillance-based, predictive infrastructures. Digital platforms fortify their market positions by transitioning surveillance-based assets of audience metrics into infrastructural and informational assets that set conditions for other actors and approaches at work in the domain of cultural production. We identify the central forces at play in these developments: digital platforms critically depend on proprietary surveillance data from large user bases and engage in datastructuring practices (Flyverbom and Murray 2018) that allow for predictive analytics to be a core component of their operations. Also, digital platforms engage in infrastructural development, such as Netflix’s decentralized system of video storage and content delivery, Open Connect. These meshes of user surveillance, predictive analytics, and infrastructural developments have ramifications beyond individual platforms and shape cultural production in extensive and increasingly problematic ways. Digital Platforms and Attention Economies Historically, the production and shaping of cultural formations—what societies value and consider to be their shared belongings and heritage—have been tied to a limited set of institutions and groups of people. Wealthy museums, powerful editors, successful media corporations, and others have always played central roles when it comes to defining what is relevant, valuable, and worthy of our attention. But increasingly, digital platforms and automated systems developed by large tech companies come to shape commercial attention economies and the production of culture. These developments are important to consider because they cut to the core of our collective and individual possibilities for agency and decision-making and will have long-term consequences. What we can think of as a digital attention economy is not only dominated by tech companies but also by the concrete technical ways that digital platforms, algorithms, and other design features organize digital traces and curate cultural production and consumption. In digital spaces, our actions and lives are translated into resources that may be used to fuel commercial, cultural, and political processes and to guide our eyes and attention. Digital systems translate human and technical activities into Article Meshes of Surveillance, Prediction, and Infrastructure: On the Cultural and Commercial Consequences of Digital