Internet Policy Review

Technology, autonomy, and manipulation | Internet Policy Review 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
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 Volume 8, Issue 2 
 
 
 
 Technology, autonomy, and manipulation 

 
 
 Daniel Susser , College of Information Sciences and Technology , Pennsylvania State University , United States 
 Beate Roessler , University of Amsterdam , Netherlands 
 Helen Nissenbaum , Information Science , Cornell Tech , New York City , United States 

 PUBLISHED ON: 30 Jun 2019 
 DOI: 10.14763/2019.2.1410 

 
 
 
 
 Abstract

 Since 2016, when the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal began to emerge, public concern has grown around the threat of “online manipulation”. While these worries are familiar to privacy researchers, this paper aims to make them more salient to policymakers—first, by defining “online manipulation”, thus enabling identification of manipulative practices; and second, by drawing attention to the specific harms online manipulation threatens. We argue that online manipulation is the use of information technology to covertly influence another person’s decision-making, by targeting and exploiting their decision-making vulnerabilities. Engaging in such practices can harm individuals by diminishing their economic interests, but its deeper, more insidious harm is its challenge to individual autonomy. We explore this autonomy harm, emphasising its implications for both individuals and society, and we briefly outline some strategies for combating online manipulation and strengthening autonomy in an increasingly digital world.
 
 

 
 Citation
 & publishing
 information 
 
 Received: 
 March 25, 2019 

 Reviewed: 
 May 29, 2019 

 Published: 
 June 30, 2019

 Licence: 
 Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Germany 

 Competing interests: 
 The authors have declared that no competing interests exist that have influenced the text.

 Keywords: 
 Online manipulation , Behavioural advertising , Privacy 

 Citation: 
 Susser, D., Roessler, B., & Nissenbaum, H. (2019). Technology, autonomy, and manipulation. Internet Policy Review , 8 (2). https://doi.org/10.14763/2019.2.1410
 
 
 
 
 This paper is part of Transnational materialities , a special issue of Internet Policy Review guest-edited by José van Dijck and Bernhard Rieder.

 
 Public concern is growing around an issue previously discussed predominantly amongst privacy and surveillance scholars—namely, the ability of data collectors to use information about individuals to manipulate them (e.g., Abramowitz, 2017; Doubek, 2017; Vayena, 2018). Knowing (or inferring) a person’s preferences, interests, and habits, their friends and acquaintances, education and employment, bodily health and financial standing, puts the knower in a position to exercise considerable influence over the known (Richards, 2013). 1 It enables them to better understand what motivates their targets, what their weaknesses and vulnerabilities are, when they are most susceptible to influence and how most effe

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