Abstract

As society is increasingly reliant on data-driven technology, consumers are forced to provide their data to powerful tech companies through unilaterally imposed contracts to gain access to the technology needed to participate in society. Consumers are deeply discontent, cynical and resigned that their data will be collected and used in ways unknown to them. However, in an attempt to regain a sense of agency and protect their institutional and social privacy, consumers engage in everyday resistance practices based on three strategies: data strikes, conscious data contribution and data poisoning. This research contributes to the ongoing debate surrounding the privacy paradox, expands on our understanding of consumer resignation, provides novel insights into consumer resistance by framing privacy protection as an act of resistance and proposes a new understanding of the consumer in the discipline of marketing: consumer as the product and raw material. This work clearly supports previous findings that consumers reject surveillant marketing practices, suggests that companies with a privacy-first business model hold a competitive advantage, call into question the quality of the data collected and the subsequent profiles and models derived from this data and advocate for widespread privacy literacy education and strong privacy regulation.

Keywords: privacy, resignation, consumer resistance, surveillance, coerced digital participation, privacy paradox