In a pattern that is by now all too familiar, safeguards lagged as surveillance capitalism flourished. By early 2014, Facebook had already applied for an “emotion detection” patent designed to implement each of Picard’s fears. The idea was “one or more software modules capable of detecting emotions, expressions or other characteristic of a user from image information.” As always, the company was ambitious. Its list of detectable emotions “by way of example and not limitation” included expressions such as “a smile, joy, humor, amazement, excitement, surprise, a frown, sadness, disappointment, confusion, jealousy, indifference, boredom, anger, depression, or pain.”

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 893