A third set of answers requires an appreciation of the political and cultural circumstances and strategies that advanced surveillance capitalism’s claims and protected them from fatal challenge. It is this third domain that we pursue in the sections that follow. No single element is likely to have done the job, but together a convergence of political circumstances and proactive strategies helped enrich the habitat in which this mutation could root and flourish. These include (1) the relentless pursuit and defense of the founders’ “freedom” through corporate control and an insistence on the
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