[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...