Advertising & Society Quarterly

Abstract:

This Author Meets Critics conversation focuses on Nora Draper's book The Identity Trade: Selling Privacy and Reputation Online (NYU Press, 2019). Draper meets with advertising, communication, and law scholars to discuss the following topics: what the consumer privacy industry is; a brief history of the consumer privacy industry; the differences among visibility, privacy, and transparency; the rhetoric of self-regulation in the consumer privacy industry; the logic behind social media addiction; the role of online reputation management services; online reputation management companies' relationship to big technology companies; individual versus collective solutions for data, privacy, and surveillance problems; the high cost of online reputation tools; the importance of media literacy in looking at online reputation tools; the nature of search engine optimization (SEO); the potential for a consumer privacy and data movement; open source privacy tools; and advice for industry practitioners.