“I can only see inter-governmental regulation as powerful enough to offer some hope of containing the excesses of surveillance capitalism. On the other hand, Wittenberg stated, “What should be feared most is government colluding with the surveillance capitalist companies-all in the name of ‘security.’” He added: “I’m far more worried about how governments use data than how businesses use it … That same monitoring capability (used to fight terrorism) could be turned against American citizens if the regime ever lessened or abandoned its commitment to personal civil liberties.”Īsher Rospigliosi suggested a more expansive approach to regulation. Wildebeest proclaimed, “The best approach is to break up the big companies thru antitrust … But this happens only if we, the people, have the will to confront Google, Facebook, Amazon and the like.” Where is the outrage today?” Facebook should be broken up, he added. As an antidote, Roger Stirling said, “The big trusts like Standard Oil were busted by President Theodore Roosevelt.

Government was cited as both an antidote to surveillance capitalism and a threat because of its possible deployment against citizens. As the saying goes, ‘The only thing free is the cheese in the mouse trap.’” “Any information they gather is provided by us willingly.” George Yurieff put it this way: “If you are concerned about your privacy and want to somehow protect yourself to some extent, start paying for services which you want to use… stop posting (send directly to your addressees), drop Facebook, do not provide correct sensitive information … not addressed to anyone specific. “No matter how much businesses know about us, they cannot sell to us unless their products make our lives better,” he wrote.

“If you think you can ‘fly under the radar’ in the era of 5G, cellular phones, and Surveillance Capitalism, you are fooling yourself.”ĭavid Wittenberg stated the case for the position that the source of the problem is us. “If your competitors use Surveillance Capitalism, you are forced into using it as well,” he wrote, continuing that there is no going back. Phillippe Gouamba put forth the most pessimistic viewpoint, saying there is no antidote to Surveillance Capitalism. So say respondents to this month’s column. Some of the media (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google) they employ, however, represent a threat of monopoly that should be addressed by the very governments that, ironically, could turn big data against us. It’s only natural that businesses today use big data to track and predict our actions. We’re on our own, with the possible support of government, in any efforts to counter the effects of surveillance capitalism. Peterhowell Summing Up: Can Single Nations Counter the Threat of Surveillance Capitalism?

In the age of surveillance capitalism