Even when we choose to install apps such as Foursquare and thus share data about where we are, the background data aggregation that goes on through Foursquare’s API is largely outside end-user control. Foursquare, at least until the introduction of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, had tended to treat information, for example, about the web pages accessed through the app and users’ locations “as non-personal information” except when required otherwise by law; Google’s location API operates, however, without any need for user participation or knowledge. Yet such data acquisition is offered as an enhancement of “experience,” echoing the personalization doublespeak that retail marketers use to justify their intrusion into consumers’ lives.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 517