ABSTRACT
This chapter challenges the conventional wisdom of how users of social media platforms like Instagram, X, or TikTok pay for service access. It argues that rather than merely exchanging data for services, users unknowingly barter their attention, emotions, and cognitive resources-mental goods that corporations exploit through technologically managed systems like targeted advertising and habit-forming design. The chapter explores how these transactions are facilitated not by legal contracts but by code, which allows social media companies to extract value in ways that traditional legal conceptual frameworks cannot capture. It further highlights the negative externalities of these exchanges, such as cognitive impairments and mental health issues, framing them as pollution byproducts of the attention economy. By examining both the visible and hidden dimensions of this technologically mediated exchange, the chapter calls for a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that govern our interactions with digital platforms rather than rushing to propose new legal solutions.
Pałka, Przemysław, Problems of Technological Management: On Automated Extraction of Mental Goods (January 1, 2025) in R Brownsword and L DiMatteo (eds), Governance of Technology (Cambridge University Press 2025, forthcoming).
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