University of Tehran on behalf of the "Cyberspace Research Policy Center" and the "UNESCO Chair on Cyberspace and Culture: Dual Spacization of the World" Journal of Cyberspace Studies 2588-5499 10 2 2026 07 01 The commodification of attention: Revisiting the harms of the attention economy 685 701 102594 10.22059/jcss.2025.394786.1145 EN Douglas R Campbell Department of Philosophy, Alma College, Alma, Michigan, USA. Alma College, Alma, MI, USA Journal Article 2025 05 06 Background: The economy wrongly commodifies attention. The commodification is morally objectionable because our attention is not properly subject to market forces. Aims: A crucial aim of this article is to broaden the debate about the attention economy. Methodology: Conceptual analysis of the attention economy, the right to attention, and the influence of market forces on commodities. Discussion: In the first section, I survey the conventional approach to the attention economy, which treats the ethical problems here as instances of questions about the moral limits of markets. I agree that this approach is justified, but I aim to broaden the debate by focusing on whether attention should be commodified at all. In the second section, I argue that attention is not properly subject to market forces. In the third section, I argue that subjecting attention to market forces leads, predictably, to the development and use of technology that violates the right to attention. In the fourth section, I argue that coercive paternalism offers the correct response to these problems and that two other solutions— the reliance on nudges and the reliance on social antibodies— are inferior. Conclusion: The attention economy is a rights-violating and noxious market. Its wrongful commodification of attention produces a market that does not respect the boundaries between commercialized and non-commercialized spaces.

https://jcss.ut.ac.ir/article_102594_4b2b541613c876752c04671c9a893430.pdf