Key Messages
Exploring The Dangers Of Surveillance Capitalism And How To Protect Our Privacy
Shoshana Zuboff explains in her book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, just how much money Google and Facebook are making off of your data.
They mine for data such as location tracking, search history, contacts, browsing history, and even biometric information—all of which is analyzed to better target customers for advertisers.
It’s like they are finding every minute detail about us and using it to make a profit.
It’s scary to think that they can know so much about our habits without us realizing it!
But the good news is that you don’t have to accept the status quo.
Zuboff points out that we can still make changes now by advocating for better laws protecting our data privacy and pushing back against invasive practices.
This book will also show you the “dark underbelly” of surveillance capitalism when it comes to companies such as Google and Facebook—showing you exactly how many cookies are collected when visiting their most visited websites!
Plus its explores behaviorism-based marketing tactics and uncovers how the 9/11 attacks paved the way for our current state of surveillance capitalism.
Uncovering The Dark Side Of Surveillance Capitalism: How Our Personal Data Is Collected, Tracked And Sold
Today, there is an entire industry based on collecting and selling data about people’s movements, speech, actions, experiences and behaviours.
This industry is known as surveillance capitalism.
Companies such as Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon are profiting off the data of unsuspecting consumers with little regard for their privacy.
This means that all aspects of human life have now become commodities to be bought and sold by these corporations in the pursuit of ever more profit.
Whether it’s browsing history, location data or purchasing habits – surveillance capitalists turn everything into data they can leverage to benefit their bottom lines.
And it doesn’t stop there.
Many businesses are also using this personal data to create new predictive products that bring in even more revenue streams; virtual assistants like Amazon’s Alexa being a prime example of this trend.
By allowing companies access to our lives via new technologies we often don’t understand the implications of what we are giving up – until it’s too late.
Google has been the pioneer in turning personal data into a business model since launching back in 1998 but many others were quick to recognize the money-making potential here too.
Facebook jumped on board soon after becoming the only company to match Google’s vast resources for gathering intel about its users through websites as well as apps for Android devices which provide a constant stream of information about every aspect of your life.
In 2012 Facebook introduced a new terms-of-service agreement that mentioned tracking policies but was very long winded so few people were likely to read it fully before accepting it!
It’s tactics like these which make surveillance capitalism ever more pervasive without people realising what they’re agreeing too – until it’s too late!
The Rise Of Surveillance Capitalism Was Enabled By A Loosening Of Regulations On Traditional Capitalism
During the 1970s and 1980s, the rules of capitalism changed dramatically.
Philosophers like Karl Polanyi and economists like Adam Smith saw that unchecked greed could have damaging effects on society and developed a system of laws and regulations called the double movement to protect it.
But two influential voices rose in this period, Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek and American economist Milton Friedman.
They theorized that with fewer regulations, the potential of capitalism could be unleashed.
This soon began to gain recognition around the world and United Sates governments responded by dismantling many of the regulations present in the double movement.
This led to a rapid increase in economic inequality worldwide as the rich soaked up more resources while workers’ wages stagnated or even declined.
The International Monetary Fund issued a report in 2016 recognizing this as a threat to stability.
The emergence of an unregulated corporate environment paved the way for a new kind of capitalism: surveillance capitalism.
It is characterized by corporations having absolute power over private data and massive amounts of control over personal information.
With results domination, exploitation of labor and destruction of meaningful social ties, these new paradigms are causing irreversible societal damage.
The Loosening Of Privacy Laws In The Aftermath Of 9/11 Enabled Google’s Paradigm Shift From Early Concerns To Become An Instrument Of Surveillance
When it comes to online privacy, early warnings were ignored, replaced by the loosened surveillance laws of the Patriot Act and Terrorist Screening Program following 9/11.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) attempted to limit personal data shared via cookie tracking in 1996, proposing a simple automated protocol that would give control of information back to users by default.
Unfortunately, government plans to create legislation preventing looser regulations in cyberspace were interrupted as terrorism activity increased.
In 2003, Google began working with the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) providing them with more advanced search technology tools, allowing them to analyze mountains of metadata and identify patterns predicting future behavior; Google was able to monetize this data from both advertisers and law enforcement agencies.
Ultimately, a 2015 study showed that 6,000 cookies could be collected on our computers by visiting just 100 popular websites – 43% of which came from third parties such as Google’s own tracking infrastructure found on 92 of those websites.
How Google And Other Surveillance Capitalism Companies Use Public Outrage To Normalize Invasion Of Privacy
Google’s Street View and Glass operations are a great example of how initial outrage upon discovering the invasive practices of surveillance capitalism can lead to a sense of begrudging acceptance.
When Google’s Street View cars were discovered to have been collecting personal information from unencrypted WiFi networks in 2010, there was an international outcry.
After investigations in 12 countries, it was found that Google had broken laws in at least nine.
This didn’t seem to stop them though, as the Street View program continued to expand.
The same pattern occurred with the introduction of Google Glass in 2012; after the public expressed outrage over its ability to see into private spaces, the product was rebranded and presented as being designed strictly for workplace use with lowered privacy expectations.
More recently, Niantic’s release of Pokémon Go showed how surveillance capitalists can turn something wildly popular into an incredibly effective way of collecting personal information without attracting much attention.
In addition to requiring access to contacts and device accounts that have nothing to do with gameplay ,the game uses a device’s camera and GPS info to locate virtual creatures which can potentially show up anywhere including people’s backyards and businesses •— providing unprecedented access without detection or resistance.
We Should Care About Google’S Granular Data Collection And Emotional Analytics Because They Can Alter Our Behaviors
Surveillance capitalism is getting more and more granular in their data collection.
From simply collecting location and browsing habits, they are now delving into people’s emotional states.
Companies like Realeyes are utilizing facial recognition to detect complex emotional responses and microexpressions which can provide valuable insights into how people feel.
They’re also tracking body language, posture, and gestures for deeper analytics about what someone is doing and feeling.
And of course, social media posts are being utilized to track user sentiment.
All of this data is then used with the goal to predict and influence a person’s behavior in order to increase revenue for advertisers and other surveillance capitalists alike.
Behaviorism And Surveillance Capitalism: Exploiting B
Surveillance capitalists are constantly looking for ways to identify key moments of sensitivity in order to increase the chances of someone making a purchase or engaging in a specific behavior.
This type of analysis is based on behavioral data and borrowing from the ideas of B.F.
Skinner, one of the pioneers of behaviorism who believed that all behavior can be explained by stimuli or circumstances preceding it.
Under Skinner’s extreme form of behaviorism, every action can be deciphered using data, and if an action appears unconstrained, it is simply because not enough data has been collected.
Companies like Google and Facebook have taken these theories to heart and adopted them into their business methods.
For example, they admitted to experimenting with user’s news feed content while leveraging Pokémon Go as a way to test how users react when digitally manipulated to go where directed before spending money at hotspots associated with the game.
By using surveillance capitalist techniques to identify key moments of sensitivity within their users’ digital behaviors, companies are able to efficiently push for more engagement and purchases from customers relative to traditional marketing methods.
The Risk Of Surrendering Our Freedom: Why We Must Question The Mission Of Surveillance Capitalism
The invasive, all-controlling future of surveillance capitalism doesn’t have to be seen as something that is bound to happen.
Despite the fact that Google and Facebook envision a world where they can monitor our every move and use that data in any way they deem fit, this kind of large-scale surveillance isn’t necessary in order to enjoy the conveniences promised by these companies.
Recently, we saw this with the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
Large amounts of personal data were used to manipulate voters and inform a campaign of misinformation.
This goes to show how easily our personal data can be misused when there are no regulations or oversight on how it’s collected and used.
We don’t have to sacrifice our safety for convenience; with proper guidelines put in place, we can maintain both privacy and get the technologies that help make life easier.
It’s important for us to demand these regulations from corporations like Google and Facebook before it’s too late–otherwise, we may end up living in a future like George Orwell’s 1984 without ever having realized it was happening until it was too late!
It’s Time To Fight Back Against The Surveillance Capitalism That Steals Our Privacy And Psychological Well-Being
It’s becoming increasingly clear that surveillance capitalism doesn’t have to be the way of the future.
There are people who realize the true scope of what’s happening behind the scenes and who refuse to sacrifice their privacy for convenience’s sake.
Research has found that over 73-91% percent of people reject targeted advertising when given an understanding of how their data is being collected and used.
The concept behind these practices threatens to normalize them, especially among a generation now growing up with access to technology they’ve never known without.
It can also disrupt our mental health: Sean Parker, former Facebook president, even admitted in 2017 that Facebook uses behaviorist tactics such as variable reinforcement designed to keep us glued to our news feed and more prone to addiction-like emotional effects like depression, confusion, distress, boredom, and isolation.
Fortunately there is still hope for change; for instance, back in 2000 researchers at Georgia Tech sought to develop the Aware Home where users would control their own personal data whereas we can already tell how this differs from what surveillance capitalists are designing today.
Their vision was meant to honor the idea that our homes serve as a safe-haven from any invasive eyes; so while it was sadly pushed aside following 9/11 it doesn’t mean we must forfeit our dream altogether.
Wrap Up
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism offers readers a comprehensive look at the increasingly powerful surveilling technologies of today.
Following the events of September 11th, 2001, legislation that would have granted individuals more rights to their personal data was pushed aside, leaving them vulnerable to its potential exploitation by advertisers and other interested parties.
The book makes it clear that technology is becoming increasingly advanced and able to collect detailed information about an individual’s behavior online, as well as on their own phone with location history, biometric data and even psychological profiles based on social media accounts.
This highly granular data collection has become only more emboldened with the advent of “smart” devices, further diminishing people’s ability to maintain any privacy whatsoever.
