Free webinar: LogicLounge with Cory Doctorow
Training 02.07.2020
LogicLounge with Cory Doctorow
Working as Intended: Surveillance Capitalism is not a Rogue Capitalism
Virtual (admission free)
Tuesday, 21 July 2020
8am PST │ 3pm UTC │ 5pm CEST (Vienna)
„BigTech is not about "making things" business, it's a "buying things" business.“ - Cory Doctorow
The "surveillance capitalism" thesis holds that companies spy because data lets them conduct devastatingly effective influence operations while racing past regulators who might otherwise rein in their operations. Cory Doctorow believes this gives undue credence to Big Tech's sales literature -- the source of the claims about the power of behavioral advertising to influence behavior -- while underplaying the role that monopoly and state surveillance play in both the decay of public discourse and governmental complacency when it comes to corporate surveillance.
However, what if Big Tech's ability to command billions for ads have more to do with cornering markets and eking out marginal gains through targeting, with stale data being largely useless for commercial purposes -- but still full of juicy kompromat for greedy state surveillance agencies?
Without any regulatory oversight, are we all test rabbits for the big tech companies? Do free-range BigTech monopolies cause erosion of competition and innovation, democracy, personal freedoms, and sense of community?