Matthew Crain. Profit over Privacy: How Surveillance Advertising Conquered the Internet. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2021. 216p. Paperback, $25.00 (ISBN: 978-1-5179-0505-7).

Abstract

You exit an online store, leaving behind an item in your cart, only to receive a follow-up email encouraging you to reconsider. Later, after getting together with friends and chatting about their new wardrobe, you find your social media feed inundated with clothing ads directing you to purchase the same items that you were admiring on your friend. These are some of the visible ways that surveillance advertising plays out in our lives today. Such prevalent consumer monitoring and targeting was not always the norm, nor did the internet have to develop in this way, as Matthew Crain makes clear in this dense but readable text.