SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM
Discuss the concept of ‘surveillance capitalism’ in relation to people’s lives both in the circle
and in the society more generally?
APRIL 29, 2018
Rami Hilal
In light of such a big event as Zuckerberg trials, it is becoming obvious how much power do
internet firms have over us the users explicitly, the GAFA companies, Google, Amazon
Facebook and Apple. Nowadays, Facebook is globally the most used site with over 2 billion
monthly users and Google is the second most used site with 1.5 billion users monthly.
(Lanchester, 2017) Therefore, Facebook and google have enormous amounts of personal data
of users stored. Emerging from these companies, is a new method of capitalism which has been
developing since the ‘.com’ era, as online companies such as Facebook and google present a
global and serious threat that might end our privacy. This new method of capitalism is called
‘Surveillance capitalism’.
Most users of Facebook and google are familiar with the usual form of capitalism however,
with the expanding amount of ‘big data’, a new method of capitalism has been created to
expand these monopolies. ‘Surveillance capitalism’ as explained by Zuboff (2015), “aims at
predicting and modifying human behaviour as a means to produce revenue and market
control”. For example, users of google may think that they are taking advantage of a free
service while actually, google is able to take extremely personalized data from its users, who
do not have any alternative choice rather than to accept the terms and conditions. Therefore,
Surveillance capitalism succeeds on user ignorance. (Zuboff, 2015) The success of these
firms comes from predicting the future human behaviours. They convert these future
behaviours into prediction products which achieve great sales. (Zuboff, 2016) Compared to
the Fordism era of capitalism where the worker was both employee and consumer, under
surveillance capitalism, advertisers are the customers and those who accumulate data are the
consumers, profiting on lower reliance on the worker than previously as they achieve growth
mainly by leverage of automation. (Zuboff, 2015) These firms manipulate people behaviours
but not in an obvious way, experimental evidence from scientists showed that when Facebook
reduced positive expressions, people wrote fewer positive posts and vice versa. (Lanchester,
2015)
Linking this to the circle novel, on how Facebook and google observe, gather and store your
personal data such as likes, messages and emails. Just like Facebook, the Circle's ideologues
influence Mae that personal privacy is an illegal concept that she must get rid of right away in
order to thrive in the circle. As the circle saying was “Secrets are lies, sharing is caring,
privacy is theft”. (Eggers, 2013, p. 179) In the circle, all employees are closely observed and
interference in their personal lives. For example, when Mae was scolded because of not
attending some parties and when Mae kept certain interests such as kayaking. Moreover, the
circle supervision over workers continue even after work is finished, such as when Mae stole
a kayak to blow off steam after a fight with her friend mercer, Mae returns to work next day
finding out that the circle knows all about her incident and when Eamon bailey talked with
her later he quoted “That’s the nature of secrets. They’re cancerous when kept within us, but
harmless when they’re out in the world” (Eggers, 2013, p. 160) and “Secrets are the enablers
of antisocial, immoral and destructive behaviour”. (Eggers, 2013, p.161) Furthermore, the
circle insists on supervising over Mae’s parent lives, the price her parents had to pay in order
to get health insurance. Correspondingly the drawbacks of excessive surveillance might cause
a lot of harm such as in the circle when mercer has gone off the grid and lived in isolation
from persistent surveillance over him. In a live demonstration of a new experiment, Mae tries
to find him using the circle search tools, which they find him instantly. Mercer drives his
truck over a mountain choosing to die rather than surrendering to the surveillance
organisations such as the circle. (Eggers, 2013)
Another example of surveillance capitalism is the Chinese social credit system which will
monitor the whole 1.3 billion people of China by 2020. China will become a country were all
your activities are being monitored, observed and judged. For example, what you do in your
free time, what do you buy from shops, how much time do you spend working or playing and
when and what bills do you pay. Also, they will judge you on your choice of friends and how
do you interact with them. It is not hard to imagine, because that already happens due to
gathering data by companies such as Facebook and google. However, imagine a country where
all your behaviors are being rated. That would create a public credit score for each citizen given
by the government which will tell if you are a worthy citizen or not. Your credit score will be
used to decide whether you will get job or not or the chance you have to get married.
Moreover, the Circle is indeed a metaphor, an agglomeration of Apple, Google and other
Facebook, these giants of the Internet who privatize our most personal data (photos, videos,
messages, but also emotions, political convictions, health ...) to better to monetize them.
Facebook continue to change, just as in the circle when they created a system to track criminals
it resulted in the death of Mercer, so too has Facebook devolved from funny videos to torture,
suicide and murder videos. As Mark Zuckerberg quoted in a letter to investors “People sharing
more - even if just with their close friends or families - creates a more open culture and leads
to a better understanding of the lives and perspectives of others. We believe that this creates a
greater number of stronger relationships between people, and that it helps people get exposed
to a greater number of diverse perspectives”. This obsession Zuckerberg has with transparency,
which he thinks that transparency makes the world better. (The Verge, 2018)
On contrary, it might be beneficial to monitor people, for example, Tesla cars can lock,
shutdown and track your car. Therefore, it might be beneficial in cases of emergencies.
In conclusion, monitoring people and employees create a stressful environment where even the
most educated and skilled employees cannot perform well due to over stressing. Surveillance
capitalism has had an impact on users, but there is always a choice to resist rather than
surrendering to these organizations. (Becket, 2018)
References:
Becket. (2018). ‘Postwork: the radical idea of a world without jobs’
Eggers, D. (2013). The circle. Penguin Books Ltd, London.
Lanchester, J. (2017). ‘You are the product’. London Review of Books, 39(16)
The Verge. (2018). Mark Zuckerberg's letter to investors on Facebook's 'social mission'.
[online] Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2012/2/1/2764840/mark-zuckerbergs-letterto-investors-on-facebooks-social-mission [Accessed 26 Apr. 2018].
Zuboff, S. (2015). ‘Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information
civilization’. Journal of Information Technology, 30(1), pp. 75-89
Zuboff, S. (2016). ‘The secrets of surveillance capitalism’. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung,
[Online].
Available
at:
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/the-digital-
debate/shoshana-zuboff-secrets- 8 of-surveillance-capitalism-14103616.html