--- title: You're Doing 'Shadow Work' for Companies—Whether You Want To or Not description: If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product canonical: https://time.com/3944845/shadow-work/ author: Craig Lambert article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-07-11T00:36:34.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:58:41.624Z article:section: Ideas og:title: You're Doing 'Shadow Work' for Big Companies—Whether You Want To or Not og:description: If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product og:url: https://time.com/3944845/shadow-work/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5c5316ef6200f1b9/69885a4bcd684860a40a0bb8/shadow-world.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1797 og:image:height: 1011 og:image:alt: shadow-world.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: You're Doing 'Shadow Work' for Big Companies—Whether You Want To or Not twitter:description: If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5c5316ef6200f1b9/69885a4bcd684860a40a0bb8/shadow-world.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # You're Doing 'Shadow Work' for Big Companies—Whether You Want To or Not > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Newsletters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME publishes seven free email newsletters, written and edited by TIME journalists, reaching more than 1.1 million engaged readers. TIME has reported on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world since 1923, and its newsletters bring that same authority directly to the inbox. 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Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-network-2026q3/newsletters?i=4473797d-179e-41d9-9ce1-0faa446780e3&cr=time-nl-network-2026q3-v1) ## Video: TIME Explains: The Deep Web [Watch (HLS stream): TIME Explains: The Deep Web](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/DQbujPQY.m3u8) (2:19)  _Published 2013-10-31. The FBI takedown of the online market Silk Road reveals the challenges of regulating the Deep Web. Here's what you need to know._ by [Craig Lambert](https://time.com/author/craig-lambert/) ## Craig Lambert Jul 11, 2015 12:36 AM UTC  Counterpoint by [Craig Lambert](https://time.com/author/craig-lambert/) ## Craig Lambert Jul 11, 2015 12:36 AM UTC The torrent of information that washes through daily life has a source: you. The data that institutions seek, accumulate, analyze, and constantly refresh come largely from their clients. Organizations recognize that people are willing, free of charge, to provide data on themselves. Time spent doing so is shadow work. Data has emerged as another natural resource like water, oil, and iron. We are living through the early decades of the information economy, comparable to the first decades of the petroleum boom in the 19th century. Underground pools of oil were a free, naturally occurring resource. Oil companies’ main expense was the cost of extraction. Similarly, free data is waiting to be tapped. Organizations need invest only in extraction costs, as they don’t pay the citizens who provide it. _Our_ only payoff may be psychological: Data seekers massage our egos by asking us about ourselves and our opinions. Social media companies such as Facebook and LinkedIn serve their members free of charge in order to extract reams of information from them. With more than [1.44 _billion_ ](http://mashable.com/2015/04/22/facebook-quarter-user-numbers/)active users, Facebook has built a gigantic database to offer any commercial entity interested in its huge archive of consumers’ names and email addresses, along with rich demographic profiles, preferences in music, movies, gifts, and other things, groups they belong to, apps and games they play, and of course their networks of “friends.” Hence Facebook constantly encourages users to post _more_ data (words, pictures, and video), and to add more “friends.” Users comply, funneling their 21st-century petroleum into Facebook’s pool of oil. For the most part, Facebook users aren’t actually performing _work_ when they produce the site’s content; they are enjoying social recreation. But when Facebook goes to the marketplace with that data, merchandizing its member-produced content, those “recreational” hours start to smell like shadow work. “Their business model is about getting users to create content,” Jeremiah Owyang, an analyst with the Altimeter Group, told _The New York Times_ in 2013\. “It’s users who are creating content, liking things, and, ultimately, a brand sees this and comes to deploy advertising dollars. The product is us.” Facebook has the legal right to do this. Users sign over these prerogatives when they accept the boilerplate in the company’s 4,000-word “terms of service” agreement. When a member “likes” something on the site, Facebook can even highlight that endorsement in an ad for whatever she liked. The company calls such plugs “sponsored stories.” Sponsored stories that Facebook sends to a user’s network gain their power from a basic fact of human psychology. We take a recommendation—whether to hire somebody or enroll him in a club—more seriously when it comes from a friend. “Like” something on Facebook, and your friends will credit that endorsement more than they would a television or Internet advertisement. Facebook has told investors that when an ad comes attached to a blurb from a “friend,” consumers are 50% more likely to remember it. In 2012, Nick Bergus, a multimedia producer in Iowa City, learned how these sponsored stories play out. On Valentine’s Day, he saw an ad on Amazon for an odd product, a 55-gallon drum of “personal lubricant.” Bergus found the idea of this gigantic vat of a sexual aid humorous, and so posted the link on Facebook with his comment: “For Valentine’s Day. And every day. For the rest of your life,” as reported by _The New York Times_. Soon, he began seeing this post, along with his name and photo, among advertisements on Facebook. Facebook had made his comment a “sponsored story”—without consulting Mr. Bergus. He confessed on his blog that he was “mildly annoyed,” but added, “I know the costs of using Facebook. It does not cost me money. It uses lots of my personal information.” As the Internet-era proverb warns: If you aren’t paying for the product, you _are_ the product. When Facebook went public in 2012 (the company had valued itself at $104 billion, though the public offering sold only $16 billion worth of stock), some of its users publicly asked, “Where’s our cut?” They recognized that shadow work by the site’s users had created the value that founder Mark Zuckerberg and his business partners sold to investors. Unfortunately for those users, they have no claim on the revenue Facebook generates from their input. Furthermore, users obviously reap the benefits of Facebook without paying a monthly fee. (There will likely never be a fee. Facebook’s subscribers are its main capital asset, so the company will hardly create a financial barrier to becoming one.) It’s a kind of barter arrangement: Shadow workers create valuable content for Facebook in exchange for free social recreation. _Adapted from_ [_Shadow Work: The Unpaid, Unseen Jobs That Fill Your Day_](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UUHJZFE/ref=sr%5F1%5F1/?tag=timecom-20) _by Craig Lambert, on sale now from Counterpoint._ ## Transcript [00:00] On October 1st in San Francisco, the FBI caught a guy [00:04] named Ross Ulbricht who they suspect of selling drugs [00:08] online through a website called Silk Road which is part [00:11] of the Deep Web. And here is what you need to know [00:14] about the Deep Web. The [00:22] Deep Web is loosely speaking every part of the [00:25] internet that is not indexed by search engines. Silk [00:28] Road was on a part of the Deep Web of the Tor [00:31] network. And what's interesting about the Tor network [00:34] is it's a part of the internet where nobody knows who [00:36] you are. It has complete privacy, complete anonymity. [00:41] Anything you do there or say there cannot be [00:43] associated with your identity or your life. The [00:46] government actually created the Tor network-- it was [00:50] the Navy in particular-- and they did this because [00:52] intelligence agents find it very useful. Law enforcement [00:56] uses it for dissidents, journalists. But unfortunately, [01:00] increasingly, criminals use it too. A lot of criminals, who [01:03] used to have to find dark alleys where they could do [01:07] their business, now simply do it on the Deep Web. [01:11] They sell drugs, fake IDs, hacking software, and [01:14] increasingly, weapons and child pornography. The [01:18] Deep Web poses a major problem for the government. [01:21] The government built it, but it doesn't know how to [01:23] control it. The laws that govern search warrants [01:27] relating to technology and networks are very old. And [01:31] as is generally the case, technology evolves a lot faster [01:34] than the law does. Ironically, the need for Tor [01:38] is even more urgent now than it was when Tor was first [01:42] created. More and more, there are companies like [01:44] Google and Facebook which make billions of dollars by [01:48] collecting personal information. And we, as those [01:51] users, are being asked to manage our personal [01:53] information in ways that we never had to before. And [01:57] Tor is the perfect tool for that. It provides all the [02:01] privacy and the anonymity we could ever desire. [02:04] Unfortunately, it has this terrible potential for abuse as [02:08] well. Bottom- line, there really is no such thing as a [02:10] bad technology. 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