Transparency should help consumers and policymakers make informed
choices. As the traditional argument for democratic transparency articulates,
“People need information to assess whether such organizations protect their
interests or predate upon them, to choose which organizations (and so which
products and services) to rely upon, to decide whether to oppose or support
various organizations, and to develop and execute strategies to affect and
interact with them” (Fung 2013, p. 184). Yet the contemporary “attention
economy” that characterizes most digital services is profoundly opaque, and
users are intentionally kept from seeing much of how their behavior is shaped
and monetized, whether by the multitude of hidden trackers and behavioral
advertising pixels that follow them around the Web or by the secret rules and
processes that determine the bounds of acceptable speech and action. As citizens
weigh the trade-offs inherent in their usage of social media or other services
Social_Media_and_Democracy