Introducing another form of capitalism: surveillance capitalism 

Every click, swipe, and post = $$$ for social media companies 

The 2020 film The Social Dilemma was not overexaggerating when they said if we are not paying for a product, then we are the product. Like the average 12-year-old in 2019, I begged my parents for a phone. I wanted to download Snapchat, Instagram, and Musical.ly so I could follow my friends and post content on those platforms. Nobody was concerned with things like digital footprints (although we should have been) or surveillance capitalism. We just wanted to share and watch whatever embarrassing content was considered cool.  

At the time, I was blissfully ignorant of the ulterior motives of social media companies. What started as free platforms of online connection have now turned into money-hungry industries looking to profit off their users. Anything free is too good to be true, and social media is no exception. Although I did not understand it then, I was probably better off without a phone until high school.  

Social media companies are driven by surveillance capitalism. First and foremost, they are businesses that make their money from advertisements. Users like us can generate profit for them just by using their platform. Additionally, social media companies are notorious for tracking, storing, and profiting from our data. The relationship between users and companies is merely transactional; the trade-off is convenience and connection with friends for the power to freely sell our data. Simply put, surveillance capitalism entails social media companies monitoring users’ activity for profit without consent, knowledge, or compensation. Companies provide “free” services at the expense of tracking users’ behaviour on the platform and influencing our advertisements, exposure to news coverage, and political views.  

I was privileged to hear from Ms. Veronica Arroyo during a lecture in my POL106 Democracy in the Social Media Age course at UofT. Ms. Arroyo is a Peruvian Lawyer working at the university’s Citizen Lab, and she has a master’s degree in public policy and global affairs. She spoke about the complex and hidden relationship between social media companies and advertisers, along with its implications for ordinary users like you and I. 

Ms. Arroyo highlighted that advertisers partner with social media companies to tailor ads to their audiences and maximise their product reach to users. Moreover, our behaviour on the  platforms is used to influence advertisements and product predictions. Social media companies achieve this by monitoring our activity on their platform, such as the amount of time we spend looking at a piece of content and who we share it with. By sharing your location, you also give advertisers and social media companies more information that they can use to customise your advertisements and online feed. For example, have you ever been online shopping and later find that the very same product in your cart appears on your Instagram feed as an ad? This is a prime example of the platform tracking our activity for profit. 

Professor Poetranto shared another instance of surveillance capitalism, explaining how LinkedIn has been using our profiles to train their AI bots. The most alarming aspect is that the “data for generative AI improvement” setting is automatically turned on without users’ consent. It takes  five clicks on LinkedIn to opt out of this setting. Linkedin is not only exploiting users to the company’s benefit without consent, but they also make it difficult to disengage from data abuse.  

So, what can we do to protect ourselves from surveillance capitalism? Supporting and  advocating for new and comprehensive social media privacy laws is essential to protecting our  safety and confidentiality. Social media companies are constantly evolving, and for that reason, we must prioritise our data security and ensure it is protected by our government. An easy solution is to be more mindful of our interactions with social media, since anything we post acts as cookie crumbs for social media companies to build algorithms. 

Ultimately, we need to be more aware of our digital footprint. As we were often reminded in high school, the internet is forever. We must monitor our privacy settings, since platforms like LinkedIn can be sneaky with their tactics to utilise users’ personal data. While users cannot magically eliminate surveillance capitalism, the best thing we can do is remain vigilant in safeguarding the information we share, as each online interaction is another opportunity for companies to exploit our data.