
Surveillance Capitalism as Threat to Democracy - jashkenas
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/shoshana-zuboff-q-and-a-the-age-of-surveillance-capital.html
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AbrahamParangi
There are two points that I strongly disagree with:

1) The characterization of capitalism as a novel acquisitive behavior. This is
ridiculous. People have always controlled things, such as they were able to.
Capitalism is, if anything, the abstraction of ownership away from violence.

2) The notion that the digital industry is characterized by surveillance seems
to me to miss the point. The motivating factors in instrumentation aren’t a
desire to spy so much as a desire to ensure you’re wasting as much of your
attention as possible. Facebook is less like big brother, more like a psychic
parasite. Or drug dealer.

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throwaway5167
2) Or a government actor, given the revolving door between Facebook and the
government, the army of lobbyists, the reliance of each and every political
candidate on Facebook's advertising, and Facebook's influence on our
democratic discourse. But sure, the digital industry is just trying to
optimize time spent on their products, and these other larger concerns are
besides the point. /s

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AbrahamParangi
I propose we make a new razor: Never assume machiavellianism when self-
interest will suffice.

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kanjus
throwaway5167 didn’t imply that such companies are machiavellian rather than
profit-seeking though, but that their profit-seeking nature leads them to be
tolerant, even welcoming, of partnerships with actors who are machiavellian
(ie driven by spying and propaganda) when that allows for more profit to be
made, which is the worrying part

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fithisux
I do not leave comment because some surveillance process will make inferences
about me.

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mc32
So is censorship capitalism when it censors beyond what’s illegal
(prostitution, illegal sales, cons, fraud, exploitation, etc).

Here, at least, with this, one would hope the owner has the ability and right
to enable of disable unwanted features.

