Brain Dump

Surveillance capitalism is not a business model, it's a criminal conspiracy.

Business models involve a trade, an offer of something in exchange for something else. The difference between this and for example a protection racket is the threat of taking something away if you don't accept the trade.

Surveillance capitalism works differently, because what it asks for is information, the exact nature of which is not revealed. Because of this hiding of the cost, an explicit threat is not required; the implied threat of not getting the goods that is inherent in any trade is sufficient.

The understanding of surveillance capitalism as crime then cannot be pinned on the threat; it must relate to the cost instead.

But this cost is abstract. It is information: either data about us, and/or data we produce. Even when we know we pay it, we're not sure what that means.

The reason for this is that information exchange is the substrate of society. It's impossible to be a social animal like us without freely exchanging information. Information exchange, especially the exchange of information about us in relation to the rest of the world, is the threads that weave social fabrics. We can't see the cost of providing this data, because at best we see the fabric — and because not providing this data would imply not being human.

Surveillance capitalism participates in this information exchange, but only by taking. No equivalent social information is returned. And it takes more pains to keep these transactions even more hidden than regular exchanges.

There is a word for something that participates only by taking (and often numbs the organism from which it takes, to remain hidden): a parasite. Surveillance capitalism's relationship to society is parasitic, and it feeds on the mechanism of turning individuals into social animals.

This is not so different from a protection racket, actually. That also feeds on society, namely the assumptions of civility, and the threat of losing that.

It makes sense to treat crime as having a parasitic relationship to society in general. Note that this is not implying that society is just. An unjust society may make a just action a crime, even if it is performed for survival. All this is doing is illustrating the relationship between crime and society as parasitic, because it takes from that society.

If the nature of crime is to have a parasitic relationship with society, surveillance capitalism wins first place in crime — precisely because how circumspectly it feeds on its social foundations.

It's time to treat it appropriately.