PERILS OF PLACE: GEOFENCES AND PREDATORY PLATFORM INTIMACIES

Abstract

For many, mapping platforms are enmeshed in everyday experiences. We navigate, locate, and move through the world with the help of their locative affordances. Consequently, these platforms have an intimate awareness of our movements and location history, and this information is valuable for advertisers. One way that platforms can track and share this information is through geofences, commonly used by companies to send targeted advertisements directly to platforms. Geofences are virtual perimeters established around target locations that act as a digital tripwire, marking who and what crosses its threshold. Digital mapping platforms like Google Maps broker this location data to third-parties (Bui, Chang, & McIlwain, 2022). This paper examines two applications of geofences as intermediaries of locational data. The first is the use of geofences by the property platform, CIVVL, that applies geofences to facilitate and accelerate the tenant eviction process. The second is Hawk Analytics, a locational data broker that geofences abortion clinics and sells the locational data from the clinic’s clients to anti-choice organizations, in jurisdictions of the United States where such healthcare is illegal. In our analysis of locational data, we apply the concept of platform intimacies (Rambukkana and de Verteuil, 2021; Ley, & Rambukkana, 2021) to understand the techniques through which geofences access private locational details. This paper examines the spatial relations the geofence enforces and how this often-unregulated informational infrastructure can be applied to weaponize location data. We argue that the geofence enables an extractive relationship with intimate platform knowledge while it enforces hegemonic notions of trespass and belonging.