Can Cryptocurrencies Counter Surveillance Capitalism?
“Will we be the masters of information, or will we be its slaves?”
Shoshana Zuboff, Pioneer of the study of the surveillance capitalism
The term “surveillance capitalism” has been causing a stir recently. Amber Baldet delved into the topic on Peter McCormack’s What Bitcoin Did podcast while Shoshana Zuboff recently published a book titled “The age of surveillance capitalism”.
But what even is surveillance capitalism and how do cryptocurrencies tie in with this idea? In this latest Cryptolinks post, we will be delving into exactly that.
What is Surveillance Capitalism?
You may have heard the phrases “if you are not the customer, you are the product” or “data is the new oil”. The phrase refers to the drive of corporations to obtain their user’s personal data for commercial purposes.
Common ways in which this data is used include generating targeted advertisements towards users, selling the data to third-parties, and optimising products and services to what the data indicates the user’s preferences are. The field of surveillance capitalism boils down to the commodification of personal data.
The drivers of this data collection and processing are predominantly large corporations such as Facebook, Google, and Apple. Corporations collecting this data have a lot of benefits to the end user also. The data serves to make their services highly convenient for us.
Google knows what results are likely to help you based on your past search history. Facebook knows what pages you are likely to interact with and find interesting based on your past activity.
But there is a darker side also. The degree of privacy we have in our control dwindles as we continually hand data over to these large corporations.
While our personal data may be mostly used to make the services more convenient, it has also been used for more nefarious purposes such as influencing political positions.
Many also envision a power shift taking place whereby the corporations will be the most powerful economic players, becoming more powerful than even nation states. This idea has been coined corporatocracy.
How do cryptocurrencies play a role in this?
The threat of surveillance capitalism puts the users of platforms such as Google that have essentially become daily necessities into a precarious position. Users miss out on a lot of features by not using these platforms but also give up their privacy and data if they do so.
There are alternative technologies that can be used that at least give some power back to the user. In a recent post by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Zuckerberg noted a likely increased transition towards encrypted platforms such as WhatsApp to provide more privacy to the end user.
There are a number of ways in which cryptocurrencies are an interesting alternative to having to use companies in a powerful position. The ability to transact anonymously or pseudo-anonymously with another entity across a distributed network is a threat to the need for banks and services such as Google Pay that require large amounts of data.
Another concern regarding the rise of surveillance is the ability of these corporations to censor and alter data. Storing data into cloud servers such as Google Drive and Amazon Web Servers effectively place the corporations into the control of this data.
It is also possible to store data into the blockchain offering an alternative to storing on cloud servers. There are a number of blockchains which will facilitate this. If using a public blockchain such as Bitcoin, the data will be resistant to censorship but the blockchain is public so it will also be giving up privacy.
What about other services such as social media and general browsing. Although at an early stage, blockchain-based platforms have been built to cater for the functions of these platforms.
Steem is a blockchain that has a decentralized social media platform Steemit built on top of it. However, given the slow throughput of blockchain technology, these services provide a vastly inferior user experience to centralized alternatives and a far lower user base.
One platform which is picking up momentum is the Brave browser. The Brave browser is a privacy-oriented search engine that protects users from third-party advertisements and trackers.
The browser is not built on blockchain but utilizes the Basic Attention Token (BAT) which is a token on the Ethereum blockchain that rewards Brave users for watching advertisements. The browser currently has over 5.5 million monthly active users.
The Tradeoff
As with most things, there is a tradeoff when it comes to our data. We can give up our data to avail of highly convenient services or put in extra time, effort, and sometimes money to make use of technologies which are more privacy-oriented.
Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology are one of the interesting alternatives to surveillance capitalism. Being able to transact and utilize services across distributed peer-to-peer networks without the need for a middleman poses a direct threat to the centralized corporations that control and benefit from our data.
These are not the only alternatives with platforms applying high levels of encryption being another consideration. As corporations continue to leverage our data to benefit their own business, it is likely that we see more discussion regarding the surveillance capitalism phenomenon and how to counter it.
