Like the way that they were collecting data before was just collecting like surface value vast amounts as much as we can get.

Yeah, why not?

But to then pivot, as they called it, pivot to private, I think is how they called it.

What it meant was that what they wanted was actually more meaningful data.

Because if you're under the assumption that you're having more private interactions with people,

then I would assume that you would be revealing more things, which would then lend itself to like,

you know, possibly more meaningful data collection.

So it didn't seem at all in any way like it was, you know, obviously, I mean, I wouldn't trust Facebook

with anything. I don't even have a Facebook. But like, I don't know, it just seemed like

there's a way that that conversation can get manipulated for like greater data extraction.

Definitely. And it's a fascinating question because quality of data at this point for a company

like Facebook probably matters more than the quantity of data. I wrote a piece with Moira Wigel

last year for the Guardian that explored this idea, particularly in the context of Facebook.

And the comparison we drew was to, you know, the earlier period of industrial capitalism,

where capitalists running factories have to find ways to be more productive within a certain

amount of time because workers had successfully won a shorter work day. So, and Mark talks about this

in the first volume of capital. It's kind of in a discussion of the distinction between absolute

and relative surplus value that capitalists because of pressure from below, which take the form

of regulations in the UK restricting the length of the work day are forced to do more with less.

So actually, restraining the work day to like a nine or a ten hour work day is an incredible

stimulant to technological innovation because they invest in machinery, they develop new types of

labor discipline, and they manage to increase labor productivity in ways that they wouldn't have

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