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Flush with Data: Mapping Fecal Biodata Capitalism

October 27, 2025

This article introduces the concept of biodata capitalism to name a contemporary regime in which bodily tissues, DNA, and even feces are transformed into sources of data, speculation, and profit. While surveillance capitalism (Zuboff 2019) turns what we do, particularly in the digital sphere, into proprietary behavioral data that informs algorithms and marketing strategies, biodata capitalism turns what we are, our living and excreting bodies, into investible datasets, bespoke preventative healthcare, downstream products, and surveillant regimes. I develop this claim through a discussion of three linked examples that convert feces to biovalue: fecal biobanks, diagnostic fecal testing, and wastewater surveillance.