They know you better than you know yourself – surveillance capitalism and its moral influences

Links table

1 Introduction

2 The New Empire of Surveillance Capitalism

3 Targeted advertising

4 Military technology and politics

5 Focus on ethical frameworks

5.1 Utilitarianism framework

5.2 Framework of deontology

5.3 Direct comparison between utilitarianism and deontology

6 Conclusions, acknowledgments, and references

Surveillance capitalism is a concept that describes the practice of collecting and analyzing massive amounts of user data for the purpose of targeted advertising and other forms of monetization. This phenomenon has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, as technology companies such as Google and Facebook use users’ personal information to deliver personalized content and ads. Another example of surveillance capitalism is the use of military technology to collect and analyze data for national security purposes. In this context, surveillance capitalism involves the use of technologies such as facial recognition and social media surveillance to collect information on individuals and groups considered potential threats to national security. This information is then used to inform military operations and decision-making. This paper wants to analyze in a critical way the phenomenon of surveillance capitalism, proposed under two different ethical perspectives. Utilitarianism, a consequentialist moral theory that values ​​actions based on their ability to bring the greatest happiness or pleasure to the greatest number of people, and Kantian deontology, an uncomplicated moral theory that emphasizes the importance of individual autonomy, freedom, liberty, and dignity. On one side, the utilitarian framework illuminates how information technology (IT) offers and features that provide, at first glance, all the positive perceptions of the majority of people, happiness, leisure and pleasure. On the other hand, Kantian ethics framework mostly focuses on the aspect of freedom and free will of the individual. This theme is particularly related to the privileging of permissions to access data in changing services and the degree of influence that manipulation performed by surveillance capitalism can generate.

1 Introduction

To increase consumerism, the actions of large corporations, the power of countries, social networks and political parties perform a form of internal and intimate manipulation that falls into the capitalist idea of ​​surveillance. In this paper, I will attempt to show this new phenomenon, which can be achieved using targeted advertising and military technology, under two different ethical frameworks, the utilitarian and the Kantian perspective. The scope is to enlighten the justifications and implications of these different frameworks. In particular, I will begin by outlining the concept of surveillance capitalism and the way it is viewed nowadays. I will analyze some of the most common real-world situations in which this phenomenon can be seen in action, namely targeted advertising and coercive manipulation in both totalitarian regime and democratic countries. I will then analyze these aspects in relation to the proposed ethical frameworks, on the one hand the “end justifies the means” and on the other the deontological framework as the basis, while offering other philosophical works as support for my analysis.

The paper is organized in the following way. Section 2 will describe surveillance capitalism, identifying its important characteristics and features. Sections 3 and 4 will be devoted to analyzing the realization of surveillance capitalism in the form of targeted advertising and manipulation of people in politics and military fields. In particular, these real scenarios were chosen for analysis because they are very representative of the major needs in today’s society. On the one hand, targeted advertising represents an incentive for consumerism and the possibility of easily fulfilling every desire (e.g. discovering new places, occasions, assets). On the other hand, social and national security, which is linked to both politics and military warfare, is a subject to which people are very sensitive nowadays, due to the astonishing ease with which some crimes can be carried out today. Section 5.1 recalls these phenomena, in particular one of targeted advertising, which is more related to pleasure and entertainment, under a utilitarian perspective, after describing the main points of the framework. Section 5.2 will have the same approach as Section 5.1, applying the deontological framework proposed by Kant and focusing more on phenomena related to the political sphere, because it is more representative of the concepts of responsibility and duty towards people and country. Section 5.3 will complete the analysis, deepening the study of both phenomena under the two ethical frameworks. It will also illuminate the main difference between the two frameworks and their values, while conclusions are drawn in Section 6.

2 The New Empire of Surveillance Capitalism

The ubiquity of the Internet has brought about the current society where the main means of generating wealth online and through proprietary platforms (such as apps) is to monitor the population. This phenomenon allows for dramatically increased gains from digital companies that monopolize society. The digitalization of surveillance has radically changed the nature of advertising. Now, the implication of the system is the lack of effective privacy. Edward Snowden’s revelations about the NSA’s 2013 post are an example of a pattern of the military’s tight entanglement with giant computer companies. There are many examples of partial, legally coerced collaborative sharing of data that can be found in the case of Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Facebook and others. These companies handed over data from tens of thousands of their accounts on individuals every six months to the NSA and other intelligence agencies, with a rapid rise in the number of accounts to the secret government. [1]. In practice, according to the revelation, the NSA obtained data from cell phones emanating from hundreds of millions of Americans as well as populations abroad – a comprehensive, limitless informant coat, and other secret projects. The ultimate goal was to take advantage of new military technology and create larger global monopolies on the Internet while expanding the military digital exchange system. In the context of capitalization, an example of the trend in which the well represents the central structure of monopoly capital in the age of digital surveillance is given by the simultaneously increasingly practiced “securitization” of the world dominated by the specific elements of [1, 3]. in detail:

1. Trading financial derivatives

2. A network of public and private surveillance

3. Militarization of security control systems

4. Remove judicial processes from effective civilian control

Surveillance can be viewed simply as a set of techniques potentially constituting objects of regulation (the first interpretation), as well as purposeful, systematic and directed attention to social control (the second interpretation). While totalitarian regimes may embrace the second definition, seeing surveillance as a tool to enhance their control over people, capitalist and democratic regimes may value surveillance more for reasons related to its rationality, its potential for well-being, and feel-good. On the whole, it should be noted in any case that surveillance must also be contextual in its economic effects and that this is more than a means of social control [2]. One of the greatest issues associated with surveillance capitalism, as also highlighted in the underlying phenomena of the paper, namely targeted advertising and coercive manipulation, is the asymmetry in

The distribution of power that is created through data retrieval of people who are unaware of this process (known and discussed after some revelations from informants). The weight of this power is concentrated in the hands of actors who have access and can manage the information that is retrieved [3].