Managed Sovereigns: How Inconsistent Accounts of the Human Rationalize Platform Advertising

Abstract

Platform business models rest on an uneven foundation. Online behavioral advertising drives revenue for companies like Meta, Google, and Amazon, with privacy self-management governing the flows of personal data that help platforms dominate advertising markets. We argue that this area of platform capitalism is reinforced through a process whereby seemingly incompatible conceptions of human subjects are codified and enacted in law and industrial art. A rational liberal “consumer” agrees to the terms of data extraction and exploitation set by platforms. Inside the platform, however, algorithmic systems act upon a “user,” operationalized as fragmentary patterns, propensities, probabilities, and potential profits. Transitioning from consumers into users, individuals pass through a suite of legal and socio-technical regimes that each orient market formations around particular accounts of human rationality. This article shows how these accounts are highly productive for platform businesses, configuring subjects within a legitimizing framework of consumer sovereignty and market efficiency.