User:Clalae/Data capitalism

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Data capitalism evokes negative reactions as they do not only affect personal privacy but also fundamental questions of power and control. Data is considered a form of capitalism among scholars. In recent years, large companies have begun offering free services in exchange for our personal information, making money off of targeted ads, creating digital profiles, prospering off of our behavioural patterns. The concept of our data being extracted from us unknowingly and that idea that we and the large companies are mutually benefitting from each other raises questions and concern. Furthermore, automated decisions leave us with carefully curated algorithms that affect out sense of control, not to mention, may also cause biases and discriminatory practices. The issue is not solely our personal privacy being violated but also the power disparities that follow, all of which can be classified under the term Data Colonialism. The monitoring, gathering and managing of our data behaviours only amplify these issues by influencing our decision making.

Data Capitalism[edit]
In this digital age, data is highly relied upon in contemporary capitalism. Initially, companies were primarily concentrated on the sale of commodities, however, online commerce found other avenues to make profit. Data is a form of capitalism.Although it is a form of capital and not a commodity that can be exchanged for monetary value, the act of collecting and extracting data has intrinsic value. Businesses that centre around technology, infrastructure, finance, manufacturing, insurance and energy are now treating data as a form of capital. Companies are pushing to collect as much data as possible and through any means necessary. In the past, companies would simply discard of data or choose not to collect is as a way to avoid spending loads of money on storage, but nowadays, deleting such data would result in ultimately throwing money down the drain. Prosperous, data rich companies, such as Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, etc., can capitalize off of and are driven by the desire to accumulate and trade their users data. In turn, this also captures other aspects of our daily lives which can affect our privacy such as travel, communication, domestic tasks, family and social networks, as well as our own personal business affairs.

Algorithms are also manipulated and manufactured based off of what companies believe we are of interest to us, for example restaurants based on proximity as well as dating apps for potential nearby candidates. These are all considered desirable data for exploitation. "The imperative of data capitalism is to generate and circulate the streams of data, value and profit flowing and growing (...)". Data capitalism is not exclusively virtual, but rather an assortment of flows of resources, the labour force, physical structures, fiberoptic cables and new landscapes. In order to accumulate capital, there is a balance of both building data infrastructures and surveilling, tracking, recoding and mining in order to extract data through advertising and selling data profiles, among other tactics. deriving such data can help companies profile and target people, optimize systems, manage and control power, knowledge and decision making. Data can also be used to model probabilities, grow the value of assets. It is the exploitation and use of free labour and it had an infinite amount of uses.

Data Colonialism
Some scholars compare surveillance and data capitalism to a form of modern-day colonialism. Through data dispossession and predatory extractive practices with modern methods of computing, these industries continue to exploit human beings. "As with colonialism, the processes of accumulation decidedly favour the colonizer (...). Data colonialism involves the collection of data in other jurisdictions and platforms that operate at a domestic and global scale. Data dispossession occurs when data are extracted from seemingly free products or services, however, consumers also unknowingly pay to have their data recorded through their technology and service. As users of such technology, we are providing them labour by clicking, swiping, sending, taping, liking and uploading, which provides a product of that labour. While using some services, such as Facebook and Gmail may appear to be free to their users, there is a cost associated while using them, which is determined in the terms and policies set for and often ignored and dismissed.

When Kitchin (2022) refers to "Social for capital", he refers to "Social" as any form of human activity data that can be appropriated and exploited for value. Any form of human activity classified as social includes interpersonal contacts, renting short-term housing, making purchases and working remotely online. While data capitalism is absolutely exploitative, some scholars disagree with its imagined relation to colonialism. Segura and Waisboard (2019) argue that data colonialism is incomparable as it lacks the horrific violence and oppression of colonialism. The dishonest and insidious techniques used to extract value cannot be compared to slavery. Moreover, Black people in America have experiences data colonialism by having their data extracted in a discriminatory fashion that enforce segregation, the term coined for this, "new Jim Code" was coined by sociologist Ruha Benjamin. Despite peoples inability to make a direct comparison, using a colonial frame enables us to perceive the rise of platforms as more than just an innovation in business or even as a new way to exert economic power through adaptable markets. Data colonialism includes our personal space by tracking permanent features of our lives, expanding and deepening the basis on which human beings can exploit each other.

Surveillance Data
Highly dense networks of apps and devices are simultaneously sensors and actuators.These sensors track our behaviour patters and create digital profiles of us, consisting of fragments of information. The raw data is then processed and assembled by a model that that will be used to predict their future needs and behaviour patterns by "nudging" human choices towards the desired outcomes of surveillance capitalists. Some have issues with this process as it prevents people from making autonomous decisions. When we think think of large companies such as Google, they are providing us a valuable and free service, but are also mutually benefitting off of our behavioural data. Most of us do not know what companies do with the extracted data from our searches, the ads we click on and the cookies we accept unknowingly and ignorantly. "(...) we suspect that more than what we would like to be shared is in fact sold by surveillance capitalist to a wide range of private multinational companies political parties and domestic and foreign governments".

The manufacturers of digital products and services receive feedback from heir users through their geolocation, search history among others. According to scholar Shoshana Zuboff, Google was the first company to discover that our digital crumbs contained valuable insights that can be sold to third-parties data collectors. The human experience becomes a means to large companies ends. Zuboff claims that even seemingly innocent apps such as the weather or the flashlight app are loaded with various tracking services used for ad targeting. Surveillance Capitalism creates environments in which we live that have been carefully curated to shape our desires and needs.