Dan's Brain

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

book

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 2019, Profile Books

Resources

  • Zuboff’s seminary on the book
    • Harriet Martineau, social observer: aristocracy in 1800s had a single word to describe non-aristocrats, lower class
      • similarly to current users, homologous set of people
      • from this framework sparked the class struggles
    • this new flavour of Capitalism has been around from 20 years, without a legislative framework for it
    • the data is shared by third parties with none of them taking responsibility for the user’s data
      • the SC1 persuade the users that spread of data is inevitable as the technology advances
    • new commodities to sell are hard to come by, Google found the private experience of the users is a commodity
      • predicting the behavior of the customer is priceless to capitalist
        • they sell certainty to the business customers about the behavior of their targets
    • for good prediction you need a lot of data, you need a big variety of data
      • data is recorded from every possible source, face data, emotional behavior
      • scale and scope
      • nudging the user toward the
      • Facebook conducted mass experiments with subliminal cues toward users
        • they conclude they can bypass user awareness and point they toward an outcome
      • this is a big threat to democracy
    • Epistemic Inequality
      • remote digital layer used to control and influence
      • great societal asymmetry from the knowledge and the power derived from it
      • without awareness you cannot respond or pushback
    • is the service free or is the user free
      • the capitalists are using the users for power and gain
    • through privacy the self is formed
      • what do I think, what do I do, etc.
      • it is essential to growth and to identity, it is not simply a matter of: if you have nothing to hide there is no need to worry!
  • VPRO Documentary
    • misconception
      • we think that all they have is what we agree to give
      • the information we provide is the least interesting data they collect
      • they gather all residual data, considered wasted date in the past
        • they contain rich predictive data
      • they say the data is used to improve the service
        • the reality is only part of it is used this way
        • the majority trains predictive models
          • Behavioral Surplus, this was already more than required to improve the services
      • targeted ads, SC does not restrict itself to online
        • case of study of the woman shopping at Target that was targeted for pregnancy items before she even knew she was pregnant
      • facial recognition models are sold to businesses and governments
        • China holds a open air prison through the constant use of facial recognition
      • Facebook conducted experiments to influence real world behavior through online cues
      • Google developed PokemonGo under guise of an unknown game developer
        • business customers paid for clickthrough-rate equivalent footfall-rate to the stores, in order to buy something
        • business buy lure modules, these influence players to herd to the places paying for this
        • Economy of Actions
      • Google Nest
        • a microphone was discovered that was not in the schematics
        • extracting information from voices is very valuable and predictive as is face data
        • for one Nest Thermostats
          • one third-party sends data to third-party, with no taking of responsibility
          • if the users don’t agree to the terms of service the functionality is taken hostage
          • 1000 privacy contracts should be referenced to analyze where this data goes
      • Surveillance Dividend puts big tech companies ahead of the competition as the offer surveillance on-top of a simple app
        • get the commodities as cheap as possible, even free is possible
          • google and Facebook giving free internet in development countries
        • more people buying the products mean more data to build models
      • models can predict emotions
        • business customers buy these predictions to find the perfect moment for targeted ads to sell
      • Cambridge Analytica
    • GDPR
      • doesn’t address the majority of the data that is collected
      • the data we didn’t agree to give, or didn’t know we did
      • this data is not regulated the moment the data is extrapolated and sent to train the models

Summary

  1. Surveillance Capitalists ↩︎