The commodification of attention: Revisiting the harms of the attention economy

Background: The economy wrongly commodifies attention. The commodification is morally objectionable because our attention is not properly subject to market forces.Aims: A crucial aim of this article is to broaden the debate about the attention economy.Methodology: Conceptual analysis of the attention economy, the right to attention, and the influence of market forces on commodities.Discussion: In the first section, I survey the conventional approach to the attention economy, which treats the ethical problems here as instances of questions about the moral limits of markets. I agree that this approach is justified, but I aim to broaden the debate by focusing on whether attention should be commodified at all. In the second section, I argue that attention is not properly subject to market forces. In the third section, I argue that subjecting attention to market forces leads, predictably, to the development and use of technology that violates the right to attention. In the fourth section, I argue that coercive paternalism offers the correct response to these problems and that two other solutions— the reliance on nudges and the reliance on social antibodies— are inferior.Conclusion: The attention economy is a rights-violating and noxious market. Its wrongful commodification of attention produces a market that does not respect the boundaries between commercialized and non-commercialized spaces.

کلیدواژه ها:

Attention economy ، attention merchants ، coercive paternalism ، commodity ، moral limits of markets