Surveillance capitalists adapted many of the highly contestable assumptions of behavioral economists as one cover story with which to legitimate their practical commitment to a unilateral commercial program of behavior modification. The twist here is that nudges are intended to encourage choices that accrue to the architect, not to the individual. The result is data scientists trained on economies of action who regard it as perfectly normal to master the art and science of the “digital nudge” for the sake of their company’s commercial interests. For example, the chief data scientist for a national drugstore chain described how his company designs automatic digital nudges that subtly push people toward the specific behaviors favored by the company: “You can make people do things with this technology. Even if it’s just 5% of people, you’ve made 5% of people do an action they otherwise wouldn’t have done, so to some extent there is an element of the user’s loss of self-control.”

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 921