The experiment succeeded by producing social cues that “suggested” or “primed” users in ways that tuned their real-world behavior toward a specific set of actions determined by the “experimenters.” In this process of experimentation, economies of action are discovered, honed, and ultimately institutionalized in software programs and their algorithms that function automatically, continuously, ubiquitously, and pervasively to achieve economies of action. Facebook’s surplus is aimed at solving one problem: how and when to intervene in the state of play that is your daily life in order to modify your behavior and thus sharply increase the predictability of your actions now, soon, and later.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 939