I recently discovered the German YouTube channel of VPRO, a Dutch broadcaster. I've seen a couple of VPRO documentaries before that that were really good too, but they were in English. Even if vpro dock only has subtitles in German and is not completely spoken over into German, I can still recommend the channel because there are some great documentaries. For example, about surveillance capitalism with Harvard professor Shoshana Zuboff.
She has written a monumental book about the new economic order that is alarming. “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” shows how the biggest tech companies are handling our data.
How do we regain control of our data? What is surveillance capitalism anyway?
In this documentary, Zuboff takes a close look at Google and Facebook and reveals a merciless form of capitalism in which the citizen himself, rather than natural resources, serves as the raw material.
It's great how these companies present themselves as cool, privacy-safe and just want to connect people ("connect the world" - "the future is private"), but at the end of the day, they're huge profit-making corporations that collect everything about everyone and make a profit out of it.
The examples are also very interesting, such as pokemon go players being lured into stores to increase the likelihood that they will buy something, or monitoring people's buying behavior and when a woman buys a different shampoo, her father Offering baby products because she might be pregnant.
It's about building predictive models to sell you as much stuff as possible. The more data they have about you, the better the prediction models could be and the better they can sell you targeted stuff.
It's very, very terrible what's happening right now and it's not just happening recently, it's been happening for about 20 years, as Zuboff explains. And most seem to be totally unaware of it...
Of course, the video is primarily about one form of trading, namely data and attention trading. I trade my data and attention (via ads) for access to Facebook or Google services.
You could see problems that arise from this very well in the documentary, because, for example, people are made to become dull (brainless) consumers. Google will show you personalized ads and make you buy a shoe or whatever. And of course you're happy that Google knows what kind of shoes you like 😉 But of course you don't know what else Google knows about you because Google keeps that secret - Google seems to be a good friend who cares about you seems interested and caring about you, but he uses you completely for his own purposes...
If you want to learn more about this and other forms of trading, read our book, The Cause of Most Problems:
Addendum 05/23/2021:
I happened to come across a document from Apple in which the company explains very well how data trading works and that it happens on a daily basis: Link (Original)
- Companies like Apple are now promoting themselves as "the good guys" as they pretend to protect your data. However, Apple doesn't really care about user privacy or your data, even though that's how the company sells itself. There are whistleblowers who say that Apple devices have their microphones on all the time and people are being spied on. There is more about this in the documentation “Invisibles – exploitation in the digital world of work” from DW from minute 29:29. Of course I can recommend the whole documentary.
- The trade in data will only get worse with the Internet of Things as more devices become “smart” and can collect data and people don't seem to care too much about their privacy.
- As long as people like Greta Thunberg or Luisa Neubauer and other "activists" don't fight against such big corporations as Google, Apple and Amazon, we won't get anywhere. “Every day, every hour, users see billions of digital ads online” (Link) These advertisements suck people's attention and shift people's focus to constant consumption.
This trade-based society is so backward...