The Surveillance Capitalism Debate: Is Big Tech Profiting From Watching Us?

Shoshana Zuboff's surveillance capitalism thesis argues that tech companies extract behavioral data to predict and influence human behavior for profit. Google and Meta built empires on advertising powered by behavioral prediction. The EU's GDPR and DMA attempt to curb data extraction. China's social credit system represents state surveillance capitalism. AI amplifies the concern: better prediction tools mean more valuable behavioral data. The counterargument: users get free services in exchange, and markets self-regulate through competition.