Shoshana Zuboff's The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: A Guide to Fighting Back
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- čas přidán 31. 05. 2024
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Shoshona Zuboff's has a body of underappreciated work. Time to get some eyes on it along with adding some practical digital guidelines to help you stay safe out there.
Huge thanks to Michael from @WisecrackEDU for laying on some quotes for us in the video!
Resources:
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Chapters:
0:00 Sponsor
0:48 Privacy, Agency, and Ownership
6:10 The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
13:25 Surveillance and Digital Exploitation Today
24:06 A Guide to Fight Back
43:40 Patreon Support
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Another big shoutout to Michael @WisecrackEDU for reading the quotes, and another for all my great patrons over at www.patreon.com/epochphilosophy
As a software engineer who after 5 years of trying is STILL trying to remove google from my life, I endorse this video.
We’re in it together my man. I work with Pandas, Excel, and SQL for data related stuff. But want to start learning more and contribute towards some open source projects.
I am totally not a software engineer. Any experience doing this or advice?
@@epochphilosophy If you do a duck duck go search on "how to contribute to open source," there are some really good guides for beginners. One of the main hurdles is figuring out git, which is the version control software that many OSS projects use. Ideally, you'll have a knowledgable friend around, but you should be fine since you are running your own infrastructure at home. I would look for non software-engineering tasks on the OSS project of your choice, unless you are fired up to dive deep into software engineering. Hope this helps.
Hey guys, I hope this comment doesn't come off as sensationalized or lecturing, because I really care about the state of information access, and am seriously trying my best to help. I've been working with software since the 90s, and spent 5 years running IoT prod ops for google. Not claiming to have any special inside information - just saying, I've been at this a bit. In all honesty, as much as I hate to admit it, I believe the fight for internet privacy was fought and lost in the early 2000s. Groups like Electronic Frontier Foundation, communities of early adopters, and technical experts gave it all we had to prevent the emergence of a capitalistic information race. Sadly, the movement was not strong enough to overcome big money, state intelligence, and corporate lobbying.
As it stands today, the problem of information-as-power is more important than ever; but it is very unlikely that we can put the genie back in the bottle. I'm not suggesting we shouldn't make an effort to implement privacy best practices. I'm saying that no amount of this is going to fully remove our digital fingerprint. To be very clear what I mean here: even if we somehow removed every bit of personal information from all digital storage, and never went online, we still couldn't stop the people who we interact with in-person from exposing their own information. In the same way that writing-style analysis has made it possible to identify a person even in an otherwise anonymous context, new language based systems will be able to glean significant insights into us simply by evaluating the impressions we create on others, and correlating patterns. We are well past an age where privacy is about conscious, coherent data; ultra-deep statistical analysis of unconscious influences are equally (if not more) concerning. This may take place within black-box software that cannot be reviewed or legislated, such that few humans involved are even aware of the techniques being deployed.
Additionally, we don't need to adopt paranoid thinking to recognize that there is likely an even bigger picture at play. Consider: if we were *only* dealing with a capitalistic race for information, then the major competing language model providers would not have very much incentive to prevent things like manipulation, deception, etc. Yet, not only are these companies ensuring such safety; the costly research is taking place despite strong indications that it reduces the quality of legitimate use cases. I know the companies will tell us that they are being good citizens and that their safety systems are entirely altruistic. In the face of everything else we've seen, however, it is really worth asking ourselves how much we are going to believe this explanation. Perhaps less altruistic motivations do exist, and they are at least partially motivating the heavy investments into managing what types of information their software will allow access to.
I wish I had a better answer for you, but the best I can see right now is to diminish the impact of privacy compromise by equalizing the degree of information accessibility. What I mean here is that privacy compromise has some of its most harmful roots in the creation of an information access imbalance. The most abusive dimensions result from some groups or people having a significant advantage in what information they have in relation to someone else. To illustrate; imagine if an identity theft victim had equal knowledge about the perpetrator; suddenly the dynamic is far less exploitable.
If we cannot prevent increasingly powerful tools from developing deep understanding of individuals and groups, then the next best thing may be to minimize the degree of "access inequality". Essentially, we should perhaps be thinking about what will lead to a world where everyone can see everything about everyone else; and, very critically, nobody is exempt from this condition. We all live as if the world is watching, because it is the reality. As terrible as that may sound to some, I strongly encourage contemplating the philosophy underpinning my reasoning, and closely evaluating what is the most pragmatic response to present and emerging challenges.
The only way to rid yourself of Google is to give up your computer and your phone. Maybe not even then! Big Brother is always watching!
@@syourke3 While I appreciate the magnitude and complexity of this commitment for most people, this is neither true nor helpful.
I'm glad to see a popular channel discussing Zuboff's work. It's one of the most important books of the last decade.
I've had this book on my shelves for several years now and each time I have tried to read it have got bogged down fairly early. Thanks for making this into a watchable format.
I read it. I recommend the audiobook tbh
@@lowwastehighmelanin... thanks for saying there is an audiobook. I will get it.
Try Slavoj Zizek to ease you in. 😂
Great video!!
Hey! I thought I recognized Michael's voice!
I guess it's official now (if it wasn't already) that you have thrown in your lot with Breadtube down the sinister path. 😉
Thanks, Wisecrack! 👍👏 ❤
Love as always❤
Perfect video to come out while im happier than ever being a month clean from social media and have been trying to have stronger real life connections and also being anxious about how much of my data and digital footprint is actually being utilized by who or what ever
hate to tell you this but youtube is social media kinda
@@michaell3105 I know u right tbh 😂
Jaron Lanier's "Why you should quit social media" is another great book on this topic; he's one of the people to help create what we call the internet (and it includes cats and jokes, can't go wrong with either of those)
@@michaell3105a creator I follow actually is quitting youtube for a month after quitting other platforms and realizing he just moved his addiction over here. Hope it goes well for him.
@@lowwastehighmelanin im going to check it out thank you
A couple of years ago i was working in a government institution and as part of a dynamic we did with some kids, we brought them to "C5" .
This is a program that is in most decent sized cities in México, and in similar fashion to western nations, it's alleged aim is supposedly to combat and prevent crime, we don't have terrorists, but we have cartels right? Aside from answering emergency calls were elements of the police, firefighters, paramedics and the military are present, it consists of surveillance cameras positioned around key areas around the city, but the thing that scared me was what they could do with your phone, with just your number they could track your location, access your camera, speaker and content. They claimed it was done only in cases of emergency, even told us they had saved people stuck in the desert trying to cross the border and the worst part is i can believe that, this technology could save some lives, but...
In a country as corrupt as ours, where not only corporations and the state work together, but also cartels, this technology, of which i'm sure we weren't shown all of it, is certainly used for terrible uses, it was even revealed a couple of years ago that the military keeps surveillance over state "suspects", mainly journalists and activists of course.
My point is, maybe some, if not most of surveillance isn't as bad as we think, what sure is far from ideal is the private control of it and its opressive use by states, but under democratic control, it could prove a useful tool for a post-capitalist society
I’d hope the first thing this video may convey isn’t that surveillance isn’t universally immoral as a category, but the overtly centralized way in which it’s implemented sure as hell is.
I’m a fan of technology as a whole and the systems that technically allow surveillance to operate. Which is why I felt compelled to make this video.
@@epochphilosophy yeah i'm on the same page regarding technology, but i do feel many people still go by the usual surveillance = bad when delving into this topic.
Tuve una experiencia similar cuando trabajé para la sedena hace un tiempecito ya, areciese que es todo el mundo contra nosotros.
Saludos a la sedena por cierto jajaja.
Brother, that is not due to the corruption of your nation. All governments, whether blatantly in bed with capital or not, is doing this to a certain (always large) extent
I'd like to add: stop using corporate and centralized social media and switch to the Fediverse. For advanced users: you can run an instance of whichever social media you use most.
Very useful video, Appreciate your work.
Thanks for this video, I've always known that these big companies "track" you and "collect data" but I don't think I seriously considered the full implications of that until this video. Switching to Proton for email and storage sounds amazing, Google search barely works anyway these days due to all the SEO bait and my gmail account keeps filling up with junk, and I also hate google drive's UX which is godawful. What password managers do you recommend? Are there any good free ones?
Of course. I’m appreciative an audience that’s into philosophy and theory is actually cool with me delving into the nerdy tech stuff.
So, I personally use Bitwarden (Vaultwarden container) that I host on my personal server. I used ProtonPass for a bit, but it feels very early/feature weak.
I like the ability to have my passwords stored on my own hardware and only my own. Aside from that Bitwarden’s interface is really slick and integrates TOTP authentication.
It's very late but keepass is very good, you can host your password file on your device or locally, it has robust encryption, and it has so many addons so you can set it up however you need it. And most importantly it's open source, so you (or if you can't experts can for you) can tell what the software is actually doing and know it isn't snooping.
such an amazing video. thank you
The video is not long enough. Great job!
Many thanks. Every time my computer needs replacing - as it does now - I think how I might start moving in this direction and look into options and then decide I;m plugged tinto Windoze at work so what's the point. But this gives me some solid starting points to begin the move.
Finally, a serious take on the topic.
Such a well made video ❤
tour de force. Thank you for making a video I wish there was, so I could share it with people. Now there is, and you did a good job. Stellar would be: More chapter marking granularity, as there's a lot to reference and play again in this, especially the last 15 minutes.
I use arch, btw. *tips hat * 😂
M’lady.
It’s not just that, but some people might experience this for speaking out on certain topics as a form of penalty.
We are already in a full blown social credit system, but most people don’t notice it.
The Israel and Gaza situation is definitely one such example.
@@epochphilosophy I was shadow banned for years, starting in 2015 after speaking out on plagiarism by someone connected to the deep state. Only after Covid, my posts for some reason became more visible. It was very traumatic, as during that time, nobody even believed me. So I hope people wake up and do something because today’s possibilities of silencing those with the”wrong opinion” are horrible.
Very informative video. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with those who have also been compromised. That community of real people thanks you ❤
Thank you👏🏻
This epic work on Epoch is epic.
Excellent video. I wish there was a service that would help people migrate to all these pro-privacy platforms, because it is a lot to completely uproot your entire digital life. For most people it's too far out of their comfort zone to attempt to make all these switches
Centralised services like that are always anti-privacy... and more convenient.
Great posters BTW!)
Thanks for video and greetings from Russia.
Idk if there's a way to put this that you'd like to hear but congrats on the sponsorship
excellent, ty Sir
You bet. Stay safe friend.
Excellent
So how do you keep your password manager from being hacked?
Hey @epochphilosophy - thank you so much for your videos, they've been very informative during the past years of my political and theoretical education. Have you ever read into the literature of anarchism or other libertarian socialism, or thought about doing so? It seems like your channel is mostly based on critical theory (which is necessary) but I definitely think it's important as well to have the constructive and world-building elements presented.
I will absolutely do something on Anarchism, likely this year!
Amazing!@@epochphilosophy
@@epochphilosophy Amazing! There are many ways to go with anarchism, but perhaps laying out anarchist-communism could be interesting for your audience (through writers such as Kropotkin, Malatesta and Berkman) as one alternative to the state and capitalism. Or perhaps the social ecological and communalist thought of Murray Bookchin to grasp at something more new. Just some suggestions :) Btw Zoe Baker's (who runs a youtube channel) new book on the subject is fantastic.
As always, brilliant work and writing here. I have recently started researching more and more on getting Google and corporations stealing my data out of my life, and had only considered small changes. Definitely gonna look into some DNS and local network storage now. Cheers as always.
Hell ya. Super glad to hear this man. Take a look at Proton, Tutanota or Mullvad as well.
A whole host of things we can do to make our digital lives more safe and private with minimal sacrifice.
Thank you so much for the video. It’s crucial nowadays to underline the interconnections between informational corporations and governments, as they unite in order to expand state’s control. Many people disregard what is going on with digitalisation in Russia and Ukraine, for example. Due to the war, in both of these countries a person cannot receive some common services without using the governmental digital systems (or it’s simply 20 times harder to do). In Russia some social media platforms, such as VK or odnoklassniki famously report their users for anti-war or anti-Putin posts. The processes of extreme digitalisation are happening in countries that officially stand for different values. This is really important to keep in mind…
What are the amazon affiliated links - how do they work?
Just simple links to Amazon’s storefront. If you come from an affiliated link, whenever you purchase something, a percentage goes to the links owner. It’s a free, pretty simple way to help support creators, and forces Amazon to pay back the little guys. This is why bookmarking the link is helpful.
Why I bookmark links from Amazon that are affiliated. I’d rather my money atleast partially go to them.
@@epochphilosophy I wasn't aware this was a thing. I buy a lot of books on Amazon, so I'll start using the affiliated links.
Please make a video on AI and how it will change code security and privacy concerns. Great Viideo!
Good choice of software if i can add i think that for a vpn another great choice is mullvad, for browsers if you like firefox a browser like librewolf or mullvad browser are decent choices although you need to be wary that these forks are usually 12 to 24 hours late with security updates, if you like chromium a browser like brave is the way to go just turn off all the crypto nonsense. As an os like it was said in the video mint is amazing but if you have a nvidia graphics card i would recommend pop os. Not much was said about tor or the tor network in the video but i guess that using tor is going into the too inconvenient territory.
Mullvad is a great company tbh. I actually use Mullvad's DNS over HTTPS server as an upstream DNS on my Pi-hole instance. So, I get all the ad blocking, DNS filtering, with DNS over HTTPS encryption on the upstream end. It's a set up I don't see many do, but it seems to be the best DNS all-in-one solution. It's a bit of a pain to configure, as Pi-hole only allows local IP addresses in it's configuration. So you have to deploy a Cloudflared container/server and then point it to Mullvad's server. Then use the Cloudflare containers IP. (Adguard Home, for example, has DNS over HTTPS support built in.)
But, I didn't really mention Tor because it is a very highly specific browser that doesn't replace traditional ones. I wanted to focus a bit more on the software that people likely use, and optimize from there.
Bruh how are you doing all this after studying history and Data. These are like, micro-sys admin projects lol. Great Job! A lot of this appeals to me as more and more authoritative governments are taking to blocking, monitoring and/or censoring the internet (case in point: Kashmir and the farmer protest in India). Thank you for covering this and going over the tech-stack. I will be looking into these domains more as a result of this. Had no idea that you got hacked and that Google is that bad with security!!! You know more about FOSS than I do (And I did my undergrad AND master's in software engineering!!!!)
Thanks for the high praise, man! It’s definitely a lot lol. I will say though, I love things around system administration and development operations. Huge fan of docker and containerization.
We are talking micro sysadmin and that's precisely why people don't use them. On the one hand, sys admin is scary. On the other hand, it's only micro, so it's not that bad if you mess up. Taking control of your computers necessarily involves learning about computers, right? And people don't have time for that, so they delegate it to megacorps, and how do megacorps make money? Oh, right.
Cybersecurity professional here, you nailed it
One thing I would ad is that I don’t think anyone understands what ai/ml is about to do to capitalism.
@@Cooliofamily cant I interpret AI/ML just as a form of capitalism cannabilizing itself? not trying to be cheeky, honest question.. because we are well into that stage with other aspects too
Appreciate that! Not a professional but super passionate about infosec. Also, big on ML and data science/analytics; yes, ML is going to rake capitalism over the coals. A lot is going to change fast. I could do a whole video on machine learning tbh.
@@Cooliofamilycapitalism? no it's crony corporatism
@@epochphilosophy please do, with haste if you believe you could break things down elaborately,
Sicario soundtrack is just a cherry on top.
One of the best films ever.
Even if I click off, that doesn't mean I won't finish it then rewatch it again! 😁
39:45
This is on my wishlist for a long time to do... Something else. Could you do a video in the future about "postmodernism or the cultural logic of late capitalism" I find his insight very interesting but not easy to read
woah michael burns laying down the quotes
A cool guy, that man.
Anyone else end up here after hearing Arin namedrop Zuboff and this book on Game Grumps?
I wish I could tattoo this video
Both theoretical and practical, the best kind of video... the same way applied philosophy is the best kind of philosophy
Thanks so much!
If you have customers it should be required you have customer service lines and you can contact a named human being within 30mins. I wish that were a law.
Think of drill rap how all the artists masks up. All of the CCTV in the U.S and U.K.
Useful Guide. ( Please turn music off altogether.) 🤔( "Green Fire", IngramSpark, geoff nelson hill ) 🌈🦉
12:50 umm, no. When does your civilization calendar start? 😂
What's with the creepy music I'm trying to listen to this before I sleep
Wish you went a little deeper on the downsides of having our data collected. Still a great video tho.
I’ll make that video
Based and MrRobotPilled
Have yet to see Mr. Robot but it's on the list!
@@epochphilosophywatch it! Would probably give you enough material for a video on its own
I was getting Dark vibes from the intro droning synths
TOR is not a search engine
That's too bad I loved the video but I've been digging on the 8 december case and well it wasnt because they hadd encrypted sfwtare only, they were fighting daesh in irak and were close to YPG. It definitely wasnt deserved but I think it drastically change the narrative
ture dude
did I imagine it or was this originally titled 'the fully automated human'?
Sorry but you're wrong, there were a few other your videos which impacted my day-to-day life more :)
Hey, fair enough. Glad you’re here.
We need the internet much less than we think we do. Secure what is needed and live offline. Telephones worked just fine for generations. Those generations built our highways and national parks btw.
We, by contrast, are overseeing the destruction of literally everything. Maybe living online is not a good thing?
Maybe this is relevant, maybe not:
Anything that becomes a "moral" issue is a real choice, something that makes a difference.
"Difference", the "divining of things" seems to be the fundamental meaning of conscious life.
A monotheistic god, by the way, is not required.
Whenever a "deity" enters the picture, however, the concept of "free will" steps in.
This idea of free will is a kind of kindergarten of the human psyche, the conscious universe that is also conscious of "itself".
But our world is a world of relativistic relations and realities, political, economic, and scientific choices.
Moral choice for us is not a matter of an omnipotent power that offers the choice to be "free"; rather, we are compelled to choose freedom in order to "be" free.
The "demand" is within, what we are already. Which is a contradiction.
I know: same old existential playing board.
Without it, though, the greater unknowns of a physical, uncomprehending cosmos can only supersede us.
This video is thoughtful and says a lot.
Bottom line: Resist tyranny. Be freedom.
Everyone forgets Oracle. Why?
I like your stuff, generally, but you are not a determinist if you think we have a modicum of agency. I agree, we are largely conditioned (in a Skinnerian sense), but the 1% of free choice we do muster can become 5 or 10% if we ironically discipline ourselves
Looking at philisophiocal determinism/free-will (or any concept!) by set absolute binaries is pretty lazy philosophy. (No offense whatsoever, I just see this point made around philosophy often and completely disagree.) Things are relational and are in flux, if we can't view categories through these lenses, we're not really doing the job of trying to understand things.
I'm never going to buy into the Apple suite.
Hello algorithm
Wait youre saying Google, knows my dads google history?
I think we're probably done. run away train
😱Surveillance Capitalism?!?!?!?! Holy shit!!! I gotta delete a lot of stuff...A LOT OF STUFF.😬😬😬
And request your data be deleted off their servers too.
Too little, too late
underrated video, way to tired right now, but will definitely come back to this.
Replace Google photos with immich?
use mullvad!
^ Mullvad, alongside Proton, is another great company.
Unfortunately Proton supports and donates to a lot of suspect things. I don't feel comfortable with giving them my money. Tutanota and Mullvad work better for me.
@@AH-zw5xdWait, this is news to me. What suspect things are they donating to?
Any time a regime change operation pops up backed by the NED, Proton seems to be there with a new fundraiser. If you search through Proton's blog, you will stumble across them.
I dare say *Oracle* Incorporated is the largest offender of data scraping.
Fair contender.
If you want to understand capitalism you need to understand the credit theory of money.
That might help understanding why corporations control us but it doesn't help with the more boots on the ground problem of how to run your own computer stuff.
@@thewhitefalcon8539 What I mean is if we actually want genuine change we need to stop using bank credit as money and democratize new capital allocation. Basically money needs to be a public good rather a means of wealth extraction and control.
why you only have 60k subs will forever be a mystery
Could be artificially deboosted due to interference with the oligarchy.
Pardon, are you Zuboff?
How about this; go back to writing letters.
The title of her book is in error. Capitalism is the ownership of one’s own labor. In a Capitalist society, a person is only held to the socioeconomic status of their own willingness to gain skills that are of value to others, & work hard/ honestly/ & with integrity.
Provide a service or product that others find valuable, you will be able to live a comfortable upper middle class life (well, as long as you are financially responsible).
FB, Google, YT, etc technically offer entertainment/ communication platforms/ web search platforms for $0 by their users, making income by ad revenue & data collection for better ad targeting, in order to hire the programmers/ etc, pay for the servers and facilities, etc.
(Google is more of a Leftist Authoritarian Fascist (maybe with a bit of neo-Marxism) surveillance arm of the CIA- as they likely wouldn’t exist w/o the immense financial & early development expertise provided, or wouldn’t be nearly as monopolistic. Then every business they purchase & absorb becomes corrupted with the same intelligence surveillance that Google was founded upon/ by.)
Cronyism could also have been utilized. A type of leftist Crony-Fascism, when speaking of Big Tech Corporations & Surveillance, since these companies are heavily controlled by big govmt.
Surveillance Capitalism = COMUNISM 😂
13:28 “here’s where the horror of this phenomenon comes to life” cue Ad for the new Google Pixel 🥹
Loved the punch down at the social-econ status of conspiracy theorists, because it was totally necessary and capitalist systems totally dont have collaboration/conspiring baked into them /s.
Promo_SM 😭