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We cannot fully reckon with the gravity of surveillance capitalism and its consequences unless we can trace the scars they carve into the flesh of our daily lives.
The disciplines of competitive markets promised to quiet unruly individuals and even transform them back into subjects too preoccupied with survival to complain.
Two years after the North London riots, research in the UK showed that by 2013, poverty fueled by lack of education and unemployment already excluded nearly a third of the population from routine social participation.
I wonder if this history motivates policy and programs in indiana where disadvantage & crisis seem to be the point.
the ways in which financial elites use their outsized earnings to fund a cycle of political capture that protects their interests from political challenge.
THIS is real estate LLCs as the gobble into each other and consolidate forming obfuscated ownership and literal evasion of personal accountability.
Apple was criticized for extractive pricing policies, offshoring jobs, exploiting its retail staff, abrogating responsibility for factory conditions, colluding to depress wages via illicit noncompete agreements in employee recruitment, institutionalized tax evasion, and a lack of environmental stewardship—just to name a few of the violations that seemed to negate the implicit social contract of its own unique logic.
“By serving ads related to content, Google seemed almost to be reveling in the fact that users’ privacy was at the mercy of the policies and trustworthiness of the company that owned the servers. And since those ads made profits, Google was making it clear that it would exploit the situation.”
terms of service can be altered unilaterally by the firm at any time, without specific user knowledge or consent, and the terms typically implicate other companies (partners, suppliers, marketers, advertising intermediaries, etc.) without stating or accepting responsibility for their terms of service.
Welcome to at&t, comcast, and nearly every other company we patronize.
These “contracts” impose an unwinnable infinite regress upon the user that law professor Nancy Kim describes as “sadistic.”
it feels sadistic to me
Radin calls this “private eminent domain,” a unilateral seizure of rights without consent. She regards such “contracts” as a moral and democratic “degradation” of the rule of law and the institution of contract, a perversion that restructures the rights of users granted through democratic processes, “substituting for them the system that the firm wishes to impose.… Recipients must enter a legal universe of the firm’s devising in order to engage in transactions with the firm.”
This is essentially what volunteers of amerca is demanding BEFORE they are willing to answer my questions relative to their ability and willingness to meet MY needs without causing me harm. this is for mentsl health services.
Still, most users remain unaware of these “rapacious” terms that, as Kim puts it, allow firms “to acquire rights without bargaining and to stealthily establish and embed practices before users, and regulators, realize what has happened.”
like my insurance company refusing to actually repair or cover FUNCTIONAL replacement of my uograded pickup while standing behind "policy." I relentlessly discourage insuring with indiana farm bureau insurance because if it. i am a disabled person and ive had no autonomy due to loss of transportation since october of 2022. It is july of 2023 as i write this.
the precise moment at which our needs are met is also the precise moment at which our lives are plundered for behavioral data, and all for the sake of others’ gain.
Google is to surveillance capitalism what the Ford Motor Company and General Motors were to mass-production–based managerial capitalism.
google seems evil
During this early period, behavioral data were put to work entirely on the user’s behalf. User data provided value at no cost, and that value was reinvested in the user experience in the form of improved services: enhancements that were also offered at no cost to users.
so not always evil
With Google’s unique access to behavioral data, it would now be possible to know what a particular individual in a particular time and place was thinking, feeling, and doing.
not guess, know
“User profile information may include any information about an individual user or a group of users. Such information may be provided by the user, provided by a third-party authorized to release user information, and/or derived from user actions. Certain user information can be deduced or presumed using other user information of the same user and/or user information of other users. UPI may be associated with various entities.”48
Friction arises when users intentionally fail to provide information for no other reason than that they choose not to. “Unfortunately, user profile information is not always available,” the scientists warn. Users do not always “voluntarily” provide information, or “the user profile may be incomplete… and hence not comprehensive, because of privacy considerations, etc.”52
friction because of privacy
Google’s proprietary methods enable it to surveil, capture, expand, construct, and claim behavioral surplus, including data that users intentionally choose not to share.
yikes
180-degree turn from serving users to surveilling them.
