THE AGE OF EXTRACTION

It’s not just in your head—your online life is draining your wallet.

Have you noticed yourself spending more time immersed in social media, web searches, and purchasing? Wu, an award-winning author, professor at Columbia University, and policy advocate, knows that is no accident. Technology has transformed our marketplaces into ubiquitous, addicting platforms, designed to capture our attention and extract wealth. “Wealth extraction” means taking money from everyone, on all sides of a transaction, raking in maximum profits for platform owners. Descended from the ancient city square, platforms including Amazon, Google, Meta, and corporations serving medical and housing needs are engineered to be both essential and unavoidable, extracting hidden fees. Wu takes a hard look at the intertwined political, economic, and technological histories that led to the rise of dominant platforms and their techniques to ensnare us and keep us engaged and buying. Platform owners understand that resisting convenience is very difficult and leverage this to keep us online. Early internet developers aimed to empower everyone, but large computer companies became monopolies, requiring the creation of anti-monopolistic policies to modulate their power. Another alarming theme is the rise of ChatGPT and large language models. To evolve, they require large quantities of data generated by human interactions with platforms—another form of extraction. Though he points to the dangers and unfairness of economic inequality, Wu doesn’t paint an entirely gloomy picture but does encourage us to recognize and take control back from platforms practicing excessive wealth extraction. Wu covers a lot of territory in this brisk, 30,000-foot view of platforms entwined with our economic lives. The message is to look up from our screens and be cognizant of the extractive environment that surrounds us. Plentiful endnotes and an index will guide those wishing to dig deeper.

A sharp and eye-opening introduction to how we arrived at platform capitalism—where no good click goes unmonetized.