Problems with surveillance capitalism and possible alternatives for IT infrastructure

ABSTRACT

Over the past two decades, the business model of surveillance capitalism has emerged in the IT industry. This model has turned out to be highly profitable, but, if left unchecked, will very likely undermine the foundations of liberal democracies and quality of life on this planet. It involves customized advertising and behavior manipulation, powered by intensive gathering and cross-correlation of personal information. There are significant indirect costs of this model, including loss of privacy, supporting surveillance by both the state and corporations, undermining the democratic process, other kinds of automated attempts of behavior manipulation, and excessive consumerism with its attendant environmental costs. Turning to what could be done, we propose a co-development of regulation and technology, as well as the key roles that can be played by citizens and civil society organizations. The regulatory measures are intended to safeguard privacy, require true informed consent, and to foster interoperability (even among rival firms, nonprofit organizations, and others). We also identify key enabling technologies, including open source, APIs to support interoperability and portability, encryption, and peer-to-peer systems. Finally, we discuss the crucial role of ownership structures for these IT services and argue for an ecosystem approach as a counter narrative to surveillance capitalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Surveillance capitalism
• political manipulation
• economics
• digital infrastructure
• IT business models

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the University of Siegen through its graduate program ‘Supply Chains and Economic Development – Plural Perspectives’ and the DFG SFB ‘Medien der Kooperation’ (Collaborative Research Centre ‘Media of Cooperation’). We also want to thank the School of Media and Information for its infrastructure support.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://solid.mit.edu/

2 https://brave.com

3 https://duckduckgo.com

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marvin Landwehr

Marvin Landwehr is a Ph.D. student for Pluralist Economics and Socio-Informatics at the University of Siegen. He has a M.Sc. in mathematics at the University of Münster.

Alan Borning

Alan Borning is a Professor Emeritus in the Paul G Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, where he was a faculty member from 1980 to 2016. He was also an adjunct professor in the Information School, and a member of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. Program in Urban Design and Planning.

Volker Wulf

Volker Wulf is a professor in Information Systems and the director of the Media Research Institute at the University of Siegen. At Fraunhofer FIT, he heads the research group User-centred Software-Engineering (USE). He is also a founding member of the International Institute for Socio-Informatics (IISI), Bonn.