Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #surveillancecapitalism

Most recents (24)

This week on my #podcast, I read #Twiddler, a recent @Medium column in which I delve more deeply into #enshittification, and how it is a pathology of digital platforms, distinct from the rent-seeking of the analog world that preceded it:

doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9… 1/ A mandala made from a knob and button-covered control panel.
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2023/02/27/kno… 2/
Enshittification, you'll recall, is the lifecycle of the online platform: first, the platform allocates #surpluses to end-users; then, once users are locked in, those surpluses are taken away and given to business-customers. 3/
Read 62 tweets
Friends, Elon sees Twitter as the “common digital town square,”but this “town" is not Our Town. It is Muskville. A public square isn't owned by billionaire megalomaniacs. It belongs to the people, ruled by democracy. Instead we obsess over a man we never elected to govern. [1/6]
Today Elon says Twitter will not be a “Hellscape.” But tomorrow he may awaken craving Hell. Society is at his mercy. This is vast unaccountable power that leaves us bystanders to our own future. [2/6]
Sound familiar? We’ve begged Mr. Zuckerberg to end the social wreckage, honor privacy, stop disinformation and hate. It all just gets worse. Now Free Press reports on Facebook’s abysmal failure to act, continuing to put elections at risk. tinyurl.com/5hdfhz3j [3/6]
Read 6 tweets
Friends, Californians, CA Legislators, we head into a history-making week with the vote on #CAKidsCode and its best-in-world protections from predatory #SurveillanceCapitalism for the children of the Golden State. CA lawmakers, please lead our nation! (1)
californiaaadc.com
The California Age-Appropriate Design Code introduced by @BuffyWicks & @Cunning_Jordan ensures that sites kids typically visit will be safe for them. No risks for kids = no risks for businesses. (2)
The crucial protections of the California Bill #AB227 are already in effect in the UK and other countries where companies adapt and thrive. CA kids deserve the same protections granted to other kids. (3)
Read 7 tweets
I feel nothing but compassion for the people who are facing financial disaster due to #Cryptocrash. The marketing of #crypto, especially towards vulnerable populations, has been extremely effective. I fault nobody for believing in the promise of power in an inequitable world.
The inscrutable technical complexity of the #crypto and #web3 space combined with massive investment and plenty of get-rich-quick stories has created an environment where media outlets uncritically presented these things as "the future" rather than "a risky endeavour."
Even with all the research I've done, the technical knowledge of the space I've attained, the hundreds of interviews I've conducted with insiders, all of which has formed in me the opinion this is all very much not the future, I still get momentarily drawn in by the promise.
Read 6 tweets
Friends, Musk/Twitter headlines are all variants of ‘what will Elon do?’ It’s a signal of how lost we are. We obsess over one man and his whims because we don’t yet have the democratic rule of law needed to govern our information spaces. Without law power is dangerous.🧵[1/8]
The result: people, society, & democracy are at the mercy of the individuals who exercise ownership and/or executive control over information. We beg Mr. Zuckerberg to stop the social wreckage, honor our privacy, protect us from disinformation, but he refuses.@mariaressa [2/8]
We've learned FB is big business in which corrupt information is positively correlated with revenue. FB's profit-maximizing imperative ignores us. Privacy is destroyed. Corrupt information triumphs. Society fractures. Profit wins. Only law can change this. @carolecadwalla [3/8]
Read 8 tweets
This is why @Zomato is forcing people to theit app.

Your personal data that they grab from your phone is far more valuable to them than the money they charge you(delivery fees/subscriptions) for using their services and the huge cut from the restaurants. #SurveillanceCapitalism
@zomato The @zomato share price is down nearly 50% from their all time high and they need to increase their earnings to prevent it from going even lower and that's not going to happen from just selling food, so it's time to monetise their customers' personal data.
@zomato From @Zomato's privacy policy...

zomato.com/policies/priva…
Read 14 tweets
Just got a chance to look more at this which is also from Appriss:

Data Driven Justice Incarceration Report - Identifying Super Utilizers with Incarceration and Prescription Monitoring Data

@maiasz

appriss.com/safety/wp-cont…
If they take this down and anyone wants a copy, let me know. It's already in my repository.
Target them for what, exactly?
Read 11 tweets
This week on my podcast, I read my latest @locusmag column, "Tech Monopolies and the Insufficient Necessity of Interoperability." It presents a theory of change to get us to a world of aggressive, trans-industry, global trustbusting.

locusmag.com/2021/07/cory-d…

1/ A mousetrap superimposed over the Matrix 'waterfall' effect.
Most industries are monopolized. Whether we're talking about athletic shoes or pharmacy benefit managers, the path to monopolization is the same: companies buy up small competitors, merge with major ones, and use their investors' cash to subsidize anticompetitive attacks.

2/
The reason they're able to get away with it is that for 40 years, the world's been in the grip of a dangerous economic delusion: that the only basis for fighting monopolies is "consumer welfare." That is, monopolies should only be considered harmful if they make prices go up.

3/
Read 34 tweets
Today, on #InternationalWomensDay I'd like to celebrate 10 amazing academics who've changed the fields of #STS #STEM and social sciences, and made significant impact on my own research. Follow them, come work with them, read and cite their work! #WomensDay #AcademicTwitter
Alondra Nelson @alondra is the first #STS scholar to have become a science advisor to the President of the United States. Prof. Nelson is recognized for her pioneering studies of #genetics #race and #technology and for years she's worked to support social sciences in the US.
Shoshana Zuboff @shoshanazuboff. Everyone's read The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. It is in Prof. Zuboff's terms that we all discuss #BigTech and the privacy crisis that challenges our democratic institutions. #SurveillanceCapitalism
Read 10 tweets
First @Pete_Radcliff kicks off by explaining the foundation of @labsolidarityhk - motivated by the need to raise the voice of the left and the workers' movement in support of democracy, distinct from the right-wingers using the issue to attack socialism.
Pete: The Chinese state is not socialist. This is an oppressive system, overseen by an exploitative ruling class, including a bunch of billionaires.

Highlights extreme exploitation of workers, long hours - and the strikes and protests with which they fight back.
Read 25 tweets
Friends, I’m so glad to share this new piece. A glimpse into my new work as we roll up our sleeves for #TheThirdDecade. It’s OUR TURN to shape the rights, laws, institutions, that allow democracy to flourish in our digital century.
"The intolerable truth is that we have ceded the ownership and operation of the digital to the political economics of private surveillance capital, which vies with democracy over the fundamental rights and principles that define our social order.”
The four stages of #SurveillanceCapitalism’s epistemic coup: 1) loss of epistemic rights, 2) sharp rise in epistemic inequality, 3) spread of #EpistemicChaos, 4) epistemic dominance.
Read 6 tweets
Dear fellow data subjects, here's a thread about a paper I just published - about how you often knowingly (or not) share your peers' data along your own, and how service providers - but you too! - benefit from this and perpetuate this unfair phenomenon (1/13) Image
People’s decisions to use certain services may allow the data controller to know more about them, but also about others - think of a genetics firm discovering that you carry hereditary diseases, and applying this knowledge to your unaware/unconsenting family members (2/13)
To the (limited) extent that people can be said to ‘pay’ for a service with their data, part of the price is actually also other people’s data, the potential impact this has on them, and increased risks to their rights. I refer to this phenomenon as #PrivacyExternalities (3/13)
Read 15 tweets
If there was twitter during the times of Hitler,Mussolini, Franco,Stalin, Mao & that entire evil lot, there would be moral imbeciles who would be using the Free Speech argmt against de-platforming.

Ontological and epistemological decay leads to confusion in feeble minds.
A thing is what the thing is, and not what it is not.

Trump is pure EVIL, a dysfunctional criminal - forget using the free speech argmnt against him being de-platformed, I opine that he should be thrown in a correctional institution.

Free Speech is not even an issue here.
I see Libertarian handles coming in support of the Free Speech argmnt wrt objection to Trump being booted out of twitter. Just goes to show how those who follow an ideology,ANY IDEOLOGY blindly,risk neuronal decay [plaques & tau tangles mainly] & dysfunctional pathways in the PFC
Read 11 tweets
Friends, Trump fulfilled his demented fantasy of murderous violence without consequence. This must not stand. History demands criminal prosecution / impeachment / immediate removal. 1/3
Facebook and Twitter are profoundly culpable. A future at their mercy is intolerable. They must permanently end Trump’s access to the global info bloodstream. Jan 20 is not enough. They don’t have to love democracy, just cravenly respond to new political winds. @FBoversight 2/3
Now we reap the whirlwind of complacency. #SurveillanceCapitalism debases individual sovereignty, degrades society, assaults democracy. This third decade is the test: demand rights, laws, institutions for a democratic digital future. Let this be an unequivocal call to action. 3/3
Read 3 tweets
There is a virtual copy of your life on the internet. Should you be worried? A thread. 1/

newsroom.co.nz/ideasroom/virt…
Matt and I ask in our op-ed what a small country like New Zealand could/should do about collection/exploitation of consumer data. I’ll focus here on the *economics* of what @shoshanazuboff has dubbed #SurveillanceCapitalism 2/
Most people are aware at some level that their online and retail transactions are recorded. “Targeted advertising” sounds harmless enough—indeed it sounds quite useful!—but consider the asymmetry of information it generates. 3/
Read 14 tweets
The Netflix film "The Social Dilema" provides a mass audience for critiques of social media surveillance but gives tech bros a platform to absolve themselves and no voice to the women scholars who have worked for years on these issues. @safiyanoble @ruha9
slate.com/technology/202…
I liked the part in the film "The Social Dilema" where they pushed on past the simplistic slogan that "If the product is free then you are the product" to Lanier's re-formulation "the product is actually imperceptibly small and unconscious changes in your beliefs and behaviour".
The film makes a valuable contribution by using Netflix to popularise how surveillance capitalists use social media to identify our psychological vulnerabilities and triggers in order to profit from suruptiously shaping our consciousness, consumption and voting behaviours.
Read 9 tweets
1/5 Friends, thanks for so many beautiful notes inspired by seeing my original concept of #SurveillanceCapitalism featured in the film #TheSocialDilemma. As surveillance capitalism disfigures our lives and politics, let’s bring this urgent discussion to our families & communities
2/5 Remember that our social dilemma isn’t caused by a single company like Facebook or one CEO like Zuckerberg. Our social dilemma is that #SurveillanceCapitalism has captured our economy, our technology, and the digital future.
3/5 #SurveillanceCapitalism is a profit-driven economic logic based on STEALING our lives for data, behavioral predictions, and sales. Targeting, tech addiction, manipulation, violent content, fake news, and more are only effects of this greater cause.
Read 5 tweets
A mega-THREAD launched by @Suzi3D documents & analyses many claims made in the recently launched documentary #ShadowGate by (now arrested) Millie Weaver.

This thread is a tour de force - thanks @Suzi3D.
Everyone interested in #SurveillanceCapitalism should read it closely.
The MSM's Cleveland version of the arrest is here;
archive.is/WsyjK
The video of the documentary has now been banned from Youtube:

rt.com/usa/498201-wea…
Read 3 tweets
Months ago my phone died and now I need 1+ man-week to de-backdoor my new Pixel 4.

Being mostly phoneless warms me up to a simple device that respects my rights out of the box.

Continuing phone detox until I get a Pinephone or Librem 5.

I'm done funding #SurveillanceCapitalism
Devices like the Pinephone and the Librem5 don't have biometric unlock options. I now understand this is a feature.

A: Biometrics have limited 5th Amendment protection
B: Biometrics can be used without your knowledge
C: A long password makes you check your phone less.
Opting out of both Apple and Google ecosystems for over 2 years now means services only usable by closed apps don't get my money.

Mobile webapps can be done well. See Lyft/Uber.

You can live without most apps. Be an advocate for open standards and people without smartphones.
Read 4 tweets
It's been 5 years since I started researching online misinformation and building practical solutions. Here are things I learned about one of the most complex and fundamental problems of humanity: Making sense of the world around us. [1/13]
Misinformation is not just about false information, but information overload. The more information people need to process daily, the higher the chances are that misinformation can affect them. Reducing this overload is as important as providing correct information. [2/13]
Business was always about trading scarcity. For current ad-based online services it's our attention. So what's next? Scarcity of quality information. Whoever manages to build a scalable business model that rewards quality information will crack the misinformation problem. [3/13]
Read 13 tweets
@rohitprabhakar @rwang0 @fxrseen @drsubirsaha @neeraj @vfiorese_ @roxanasoi @hessiejones @AlaricAloor @sarbjeetjohal @MiaD @jrhunt @defcon_5 Thanks Ray for the recommendation. I'm not sure where to begin except to say I don't have special insights into public trust. I tend to agree there seem to be stereotypical differences between countries in the public's trust in government versus trust in business. -/2
@rohitprabhakar @rwang0 @fxrseen @drsubirsaha @neeraj @vfiorese_ @roxanasoi @hessiejones @AlaricAloor @sarbjeetjohal @MiaD @jrhunt @defcon_5 2/n: So the cliche goes that Americans distrust government but have faith in the invisible hand of the markets, and so they "trust" businesses more (shudder quotes are deliberate when we're talking in such broad generalizations). -/3
@rohitprabhakar @rwang0 @fxrseen @drsubirsaha @neeraj @vfiorese_ @roxanasoi @hessiejones @AlaricAloor @sarbjeetjohal @MiaD @jrhunt @defcon_5 3/n: Conversely continental Europeans stereotypically tend to trust governments more than business (and so when Iceland wanted to DNA-test the entire population for research purposes, compliance was pretty high; citizens trusted in the outcomes, and trusted in due care). -/4
Read 15 tweets

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