Seminar notes: Surveillance capitalism

Economies of scale and scope

Economies of scale

The cost advantages that enterprises obtain due to their scale of operation

  • cost per unit of output generally decreasing with increasing scale as fixed costs are spread out over more units of output

Tech giants

  • the cost of developing software, platforms, or digital infrastructure might be high initially
  • but the marginal cost of serving additional users is relatively low
  • tech giants can scale up rapidly and dominate markets, making it challenging for new entrants to compete

Economies of scope

It is more cost-efficient to produce a range of products together than to produce each one of them on its own

  • due to the shared use of inputs or processes across different products or services

Tech giants

  • Google, Amazon, and Facebook are expanding their product portfolios across different but related domains

For example,

  • Amazon uses its logistics and distribution network to offer not just retail services but also cloud computing through Amazon Web Services
  • Google leverages its massive data collection from search services to enhance its advertising business and develop new products like Google Assistant
  • By sharing infrastructure, data, and technological capabilities across different services, these companies achieve cost efficiencies and competitive advantages that are difficult for smaller players to match

Network effects

 

Implications

Market Dominance

  • economies of scale and scope have allowed tech giants to achieve and maintain dominant positions in their respective markets
  • there are high barriers to entry for potential competitors.

Innovation and consumer benefits

  • innovation and benefits for consumers, including lower prices, better products
  • new services that might not have been feasible without the scale and scope these companies operate at

Regulatory scrutiny

  • raised concerns about market concentration, data privacy, and anti-competitive practices
  • stifle competition and innovation in the long run
  • Facebook owns WhatsApp — and Telegram is so much better!

Global reach

  • the digital nature of these businesses allows tech giants to operate globally, amplifying the effects of economies of scale and scope across international markets
  • challenges for local competitors and raises complex regulatory issues across different jurisdictions

Shoshana Zuboff on Surveillance Capitalism

Secret ways of gathering information from us

  • while pretending to be private

“I have nothing to hide”

  • profound misconception of what is going on

We think that the only information they have is what we have given them

  • and that we can control it
  • but this is the least important part

Google knows were we are at all times

  • “waste material”
  • train models — patterns of human behavior
  • predict what people are likely to do

Behavioral surplus

  • start predicting behavior and consumption patterns

What food you might want

  • and auction that off

“People have their own will”

  • but now only when we are online

A supermarket chain new a woman was pregnant before she did

  • she changed shampoo
  • and her father was sent ads for baby products

Family photos

  • birthday party pictures
  • analyzing hundreds of facial muscles
  • residual data scraped off the pictures

Predictions of human behavior

  • we are not the customers, we are the products
  • sold to business customers

Open air prison

  • no reason to have people in prison anymore
  • engineered to be indecipherable, all in secret

Facebook, Massive Scale Subliminal Ques Experiment

  • we can manipulate subliminal keys to change offline behavior
  • we can do this while bypassing user awareness

Pokemon Go

  • developed inside Google — the inventor of surveillance capitalism
  • footfall — real bodies into real businesses
  • “lure modules” — make people come and spend money
  • herd you through the city to the places that were paying for your body
  • getting you into a place where we have predicted you will be
  • the predictions are worth more if we can show that they are likely to come true

You are having a good time — saturated with convenience

  • the shadow operations are hidden
  • you are so busy being entertained — you are not asking questions

Google — “home security”

  • microphone built into it — secret
  • helps extraction of behavioral surplus
  • they are after voices just as they are after faces
  • deny until you are habituated

Privacy policy

  • thermostat
  • collects data which is sold on
  • the functionality of the product depends on your agreement

Cars

  • selling data on the way you drive
  • too many privacy clauses to read
  • you can imagine a free car that sells on your data
  • the car is like a trojan horse for the data
  • we repurpose our vehicles as surveillance vehicles
  • combine with data from credit card purchases

We need different qualities of data

Surveillance dividend

  • you are not just making an app
  • but also a surveillance dividend
  • extra money comes from this surveillance dividend

Android phones

  • sell them for free and collect data
  • more behavioral surplus
  • Facebook drones providing hookup

Predict mood shifts

  • when they are stresses, frightened, inferior
  • alert a teenager with a date on Friday a black leather jacket

Cambridge Analytica

Political data

  • sell data from 80 million American voters
  • we can understand their inner demons
  • and how to target them
  • trigger emotions
  • make them go to websites, click on things, who to vote for

Amish phone

  • we deserve the advantages of the internet without having to be supervised
  • we should not be treated as products
  • we should use the technology, the technology should not use us

Governments benefit from it

  • they can control their citizens
  • we need to preserve our democratic future

GDPR

  • but mainly limited to data that we have given freely
  • but most of the data is in the shadow experiences
  • they took our lives and made them into profits
  • they took it without our knowledge

And anti-trust laws

  • but we still need more

Aljazeera, “The AI series: AI and Surveillance Capitalism”

Couldry and Mejias, “Data Colonialism: Rethinking Big Data’s Relation to the Contemporary Subject.” 2019

Download pdf

Couldry and Mejias – 2019 – Data Colonialism Rethinking Big Data’s Relation t