Surveillance capitalism is an economic system in which companies collect and monetize personal data from individuals, often without their full knowledge or consent, in order to predict and modify their behavior for profit.
The key aspects of surveillance capitalism are:
– Companies, led by tech giants like Google and Facebook, collect vast amounts of personal data from people’s online activities, purchases, locations, and more[6][7].
– This data is then used to make highly accurate predictions about people’s future behaviors, thoughts, and emotions[8][9].
– These behavioral predictions are then sold to third parties, such as advertisers, who can use the information to influence and manipulate people’s actions[8][9].
– The purpose is not to serve people’s needs, but to maximize corporate profits by exploiting human behavior and experiences as a source of raw material[8].
– This process disregards individual privacy and autonomy, as people’s personal data is extracted and commodified without their full awareness or consent[8].
Surveillance capitalism represents a fundamental shift from traditional capitalism, which was based on the production and sale of goods and services. Instead, surveillance capitalism feeds on human experiences and behaviors, treating them as free raw material to be captured and used for profit[8][10].
Here are the top 10 ways surveillance capitalism breaks democracy:
1. It creates unprecedented concentrations of knowledge and power that are inherently anti-democratic. Surveillance capitalists know far more about us than we know about them or ourselves[2][3].
2. It erodes our autonomy and free will by using “economies of herd” and subtle behavioral modification to shape our actions towards profitable outcomes[2].
3. It introduces new axes of social inequality and injustice through these knowledge asymmetries[2].
4. It forecloses alternatives and makes us dependent on surveillance platforms just to participate in daily life[2].
5. It undermines the capacity for moral judgment and critical thinking necessary for a healthy democracy by diminishing our right to the future tense and human agency[2].
6. It enables unprecedented commercial surveillance and manipulation of human behavior at a population scale, which is fundamentally at odds with democratic principles[3][4].
7. It has spread rapidly across the economy, extending its reach into our bodies, homes, and cities, challenging human autonomy and democratic sovereignty[5].
8. It has been able to operate largely unchecked by laws and regulations as “democracy has slept” in the face of these new economic mechanisms[4].
9. It represents a new “original sin” of capitalism, claiming private human experience as raw material to be translated into profitable data products, without consent or accountability[5].
10. It has quickly overwhelmed the earlier democratic vision of the internet, transforming it into an invasive and exploitative economic order[4].
Citations
[1] https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1483285/FULLTEXT01.pdf
[2] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/03/harvard-professor-says-surveillance-capitalism-is-undermining-democracy/
[3] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/shoshana-zuboff-q-and-a-the-age-of-surveillance-capital.html
[4] https://www.mediaed.org/digital-disconnect-10/
[5] https://newlaborforum.cuny.edu/2019/01/22/surveillance-capitalism/
[6 https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/surveillance-capitalism
[7] https://www.techtarget.com/whatis/definition/surveillance-capitalism
[8] https://infoguides.pepperdine.edu/digitalliteracy/surveillancecapitalism
[9] https://www.shortform.com/blog/what-is-surveillance-capitalism/
[`0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism