EconTalk Shoshana Zuboff on Surveillance Capitalism
11 snips
Jul 29, 2019 
Shoshana Zuboff, Professor Emerita at Harvard Business School and author of "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism," dives deep into the perils of modern data monetization. She explores how tech giants like Google and Facebook commodify personal experiences, threatening privacy and democracy. The conversation highlights the manipulation of user behavior and the dangers posed by seemingly 'free' services that exploit behavioral data. Zuboff calls for urgent legal reforms to protect individual rights and discusses the troubling realities of health apps and their data practices.
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Surveillance Capitalism Defined
- Surveillance capitalism monetizes private human experience, transforming it into behavioral data.
- This data is then used to create prediction products sold to businesses interested in our future behavior.
Gmail and Data Collection
- Google's Gmail launch in 2004 caused outrage when users realized their emails were being used for targeted ads.
- This led to proposed legislation and Google developing strategies to habituate users to their data collection practices.
Discontinuity with Traditional Advertising
- Surveillance capitalism differs from traditional advertising because it leverages vast capital resources and ubiquitous digital architecture.
- This creates significant asymmetries of data, information, and power, unlike historical advertising models.
