[ivojp]

I'll start with that I am all for the idea of intellectual privacy and the need for safe guards, but even I could only make it part way through this article (and if these are the people who are supposed to be leading the charge for ethics in AI, we are, surely, screwed).

This perspective (and there are many like it), firstly, tries to tie the problem to capitalism as if it's the engine that corrupts, and, secondly, tries to equate whats going on to surveillance since we presumably can all agree that surveillance is bad.

If you are to make an ass out of yourself or expose something private about yourself in public, its not surveillance if people form opinions about you or gather that information (the lifelock guy and his SSN come to mind - no one would argue his personal information was hacked). I think part of this stems from a bad mental model of what being on the internet is: if Facebook/Twitter/other social media are the new town halls or pubic fora, it's difficult to consider you can be in public from the privacy of your own home.

It is also not some unavoidable aspect of capitalism for your data to be used for potentially nefarious purposes. Consumers are just poorly informed of the transaction that is taking place. To label it "surveillance capitalism" implies that removing the profit motive would mean no one would ever "spy" on you or collect your data. Even a cursory overview of the 20th century or modern China shows how dishonest that implication is.

For a quick perspective on the economics of your data, Google reported $160B in revenue on 1B active monthly users in 2019. If google charged each user $13/month for access to all it's services, it would make the same amount of money. This is on par with a Netflix or Spotify subscription.

Should companies be forced to offer some sort of paid tier where your data is not collected? Perhaps. Should consumers be made aware of what they are giving up when they use a certain "free" service? Sure. There are many problems with our current system and our current understanding of things, but one problem that we do not have is being subjugating to the predations of a "late-stage" "surveillance" capitalist machine.

[Bakary]

Broadly speaking, we are being increasingly surveilled and this surveillance takes place under a capitalist machine, except perhaps in North Korea (although I will not venture in a semantic debate on that account). The winners in this world are getting larger and larger and accumulating ever more capital, so it could arguably be late-stage even if that concept is probably best left behind as too vague. Therefore, is surveillance capitalism such a bad expression to use?

We can blame consumers for being unaware, or not active enough in defending their rights, or not careful enough in guarding their privacy and their mental models, but I am under the impression that it is more productive to work towards or at the very least orient ourselves towards a society where you do not have to be paranoid at every step instead of one that prioritizes simply assigning blame on an individual level and abandoning the idea of addressing structural problems.

In a sense, arguing over what is real capitalism or not in a defensive posture doesn't really address the issue. Pointing out that a subscription model would be the same in terms of revenue misses the point that Google is growing too big to remain a positive force in people's lives. In both cases we start from flawed premises.

[ivojp]

I believe it is a bad expression to use because what should be a critique of the data economy now is impugning aspects of capitalism. If the end you wish to effect is better privacy rights on the internet, you've lost more than half of the US by blaming the economic system to which they owe their prosperity.

What might be more productive is if this article equated what is going on to deceptive or fraudulent business practice. This is a concept most people can agree is bad and would want to do something about regardless of whether its from private businesses under capitalism or by the state under either capitalism or communism.

Let me be clear here that I am in no way arguing for some sort of libertarian dream of unfettered capitalism - some of my policy prescriptions included forcing companies to offer a paid tier. But the author casts the collection and selling of data as something that is inevitably going to lead to harm in society. Does the author or anyone here believe that something like Google Search would be a quality product if run by the government? Or that it would be more trustworthy? Take the 2 American political poles' bugaboos - voter suppression and voter fraud - what would a state run search engine that supposedly didn't collect data on its users have to return for those queries?

I think I largely agree with your sentiment although there is another aspect I disagree with: that Google is too big to remain a positive force in society. Unless I am reading that wrong, it implies that there is some level that once something reaches it, it has to be bad for us. You could make this same argument about governments. The US government is larger than Google with more power, if it can no longer be a positive force in our lives, must it be scaled back? If at it's current size, it cannot come together and regulate Google from engaging in "surveillance capitalism" and we must make it smaller, what are we to do?

[andrekandre]

> data economy now is impugning aspects of capitalism

capitalism is, at a very basic definition, the utilization of capital to generate more capital

data is just one form of capital

separating "data economy" with "capitalsm" doesnt really work in my opinion...