Manipulation, Real-time Profiling, and their Wrongs

Jiahong Chen, Lucas Miotto Lopes

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterAcademic

Abstract

Technology scholars and journalists have recently called attention to digital platforms’ and devices’ ability to influence users based on their present moods, stress level, hunger, and other transient features. For them, such influence based on users’ present status - what the chapter calls “real-time profiling” - is not only a clear form of wrongful manipulation but also online manipulation’s future. The chapter aims to explain what makes real-time profiling wrong (when wrong) and discusses problems associated with its regulation. After explaining what real-time profiling consists in and showing that it can be presumed to be a form of manipulation, the chapter argues that real-time profiling is wrong both because the profiler psychologically hijacks profiled subjects and because it works as a gateway to further wrongs. Towards the end, the chapter discusses some implications of the proposed account for the legal regulation of online manipulative technologies like real-time profiling. It is argued that existing legal frameworks are not fine-grained enough to deal with the wrongs associated with real-time profiling and related forms of online manipulation.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationThe Philosophy of Online Manipulation
EditorsMichael Klenk, Fleur Jongepier
Place of PublicationNew York
PublisherRoutledge
Chapter20
Pages392-409
Number of pages18
ISBN (Electronic)9781003205425
ISBN (Print)9781032071145, 9781032030012
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

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