Introduction

We often talk about Big Tech as if it just grew too big, too fast. But that misses the real story. The power of Google, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple doesn’t come from better technology or smarter leaders - it comes from creating a new kind of economy: surveillance capitalism.

I wanted to really understand what that means - beyond the headlines and buzzwords. So I started reading The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff and watching some of her talks.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism — book cover
Cover of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

The deeper I went, the clearer it became: this isn’t just a critique of technology. It’s a mirror showing how our everyday lives - our thoughts, choices, moods, and movements - have quietly become raw material for profit.

You’ve probably heard the phrase “If it’s free, you’re the product.” But that’s not quite right. We’re not the product - we’re the resource from which the product is made. The real product is the prediction of our behavior. And the real customers? The companies that pay to access those predictions - not to improve our lives, but to keep the profits flowing.

Zuboff calls this model “surveillance capitalism” because it turns human experience itself into an economic resource. It’s not just about showing ads; it’s about shaping behavior.

Over the past two decades, this system has quietly spread through every layer of digital life. It fuels record profits, shapes politics, and erodes privacy and democracy along the way. What began with Google and was supercharged by Facebook has now become the standard model for nearly every major platform - from Microsoft and Amazon to X and TikTok. Surveillance capitalism isn’t the exception anymore. It’s the rule.

From Innovation to Extraction

The early success of Big Tech wasn’t just about innovation - it was about discovering that human behavior could be mined.

When Google launched targeted ads in the early 2000s, it realized something extraordinary: the data people left behind could predict what they’d do next. That “behavioral surplus,” as Zuboff calls it, became the foundation of a new economy built on prediction.

By 2024, the five largest U.S. tech companies generated over $1.65 trillion in annual revenue (Statista, 2024) - more than the GDP of most countries. That kind of growth doesn’t come from selling products alone; it comes from constant access to human behavior.

Every time we do something online - and often offline - we leave behind a trail of data. Some of it’s obvious, like a photo you post or a video you like. But most of it is invisible “metadata”: when you posted, where you were, your device type, your location, your IP address, your advertising ID, even your Wi-Fi network name.

All these tiny details are gathered, sorted, and analyzed by algorithms to build eerily accurate digital profiles - versions of us that can predict what we’ll want, what we’ll believe, and what we’ll do next. When companies like Google or Meta say they don’t sell your data, they’re technically right. They don’t sell you - they sell access to the ability to influence you.

To keep that access, Big Tech perfected the illusion of generosity. Free email. Free maps. Free social media. But “free” was never free - it’s been the bait. Behind those friendly interfaces, every click, pause, and message is logged. Data brokers build a parallel market worth hundreds of billions each year (Forbes, 2023).

This isn’t advertising in the old sense. It’s the sale of certainty - determined through a terrifying ability to predict what you’ll do, when you’ll do it, and how to steer you there.

The Data Economy That Never Sleeps

The tracking and manipulation don’t stop when you close your browser. They follow you home.

Smart doorbells, TVs, watches, fitness trackers, and voice assistants all feed the same system. Your speaker knows when you talk and what mood you’re in. Your car records every trip. Your phone measures how long you stare at the screen.

Consent, when it’s even requested, hides behind walls of unreadable legal text. One study found it would take over 200 hours a year to read all the privacy policies you agree to (Carnegie Mellon University, 2019). So most people click “accept” and move on - because opting out often means not participating at all.

The formula is simple: more data means better predictions. The richer the profile, the more valuable it becomes. Human experience itself has become the raw fuel of this system.

Democracy Was Always the Target

What started as commercial surveillance has grown into political infrastructure.

The first major wake-up call came in 2013, when Edward Snowden revealed the NSA’s PRISM program - showing that U.S. intelligence agencies were directly tapping into the servers of companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. The line between corporate and government surveillance vanished overnight.

Then, in 2016, came Cambridge Analytica. Over 87 million Facebook profiles were harvested to build psychological models of voters (The Guardian, 2018). Those models were used to target people with emotionally charged content designed to influence both the Brexit vote and the U.S. presidential election.

By the 2020s, this fusion of technology and manipulation had gone global. Leaked files showed that governments - including the U.S. and Israel - were paying influencers and PR firms millions to spread propaganda and automate AI-driven disinformation (Responsible Statecraft, 2025; The Jerusalem Post, 2025; Haaretz, 2025; The Intercept, 2025).

The same systems built to sell products are now selling ideologies. The infrastructure of persuasion has become the machinery of control.

The Business of Control

The platforms shaping our public lives were never built to promote truth - they were built to capture attention. Outrage, novelty, and emotional triggers keep us scrolling because attention equals profit. A 2023 MIT Technology Review study found that false news spreads six times faster on social media than accurate information. The reason is simple: emotions drive engagement, and engagement drives revenue.

This is why misinformation and division thrive online. The more polarized we become, the easier we are to predict - and predictability pays. Democracy, with its uncertainty and open debate, doesn’t.

We’re now living in a kind of digital feudalism. We don’t own our data, our feeds, or even our digital identities - we rent them from a handful of powerful platforms. In return, we produce an endless stream of behavioral data just to stay connected.

Governments and tech giants increasingly depend on each other to maintain control, each feeding the other’s power. Artificial intelligence has only deepened that imbalance. These systems are trained on the world’s collective output - our writing, art, voices, and ideas - without permission. What they give back is a polished reflection of our own creativity, repackaged and sold as “intelligence.”

Bit by bit, even human thought is becoming something you have to subscribe to.

Whats Left Thats Truly Ours

The system of surveillance capitalism feels enormous, but it’s not unstoppable. It relies on one fragile assumption - that we’ll keep feeding it.

Every unpredictable act - using open-source software, blocking trackers, or choosing tools that respect privacy - is a small act of rebellion. Each one chips away at the machine’s power to predict.

But the real change starts deeper than that. It’s cultural. It’s about refusing to accept this as “just the way things are.” Surveillance capitalism isn’t nature - it’s design. And what’s designed can be redesigned.

What’s at stake isn’t just privacy. It’s the freedom to think, choose, and live without being constantly measured and nudged by someone else’s algorithm.

As long as data remains the raw material of this economy, our future will remain its currency. The question isn’t whether surveillance capitalism exists - it does. The question is whether we’ll keep participating in it.

References

  1. Zuboff, Shoshana – The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
    https://shoshanazuboff.com/book/about/ (shoshanazuboff.com)

  2. “The Facebook data of up to 87 million people … may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica” — The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/04/facebook-cambridge-analytica-user-data-latest-more-than-thought (theguardian.com)

  3. “Few people read privacy policies. Studies have projected that it would take an average user over 600 hours …” — Carnegie Mellon University
    https://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2016/march/privacy-policy.html (cmu.edu)

  4. “Cambridge Analytica spent nearly $1 m on data collection … more than 50 million individual profiles …” — The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analytica-facebook-influence-us-election (theguardian.com)

  5. “Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm, was able to collect data from as many as 87 million Facebook users without their consent.” — PMC / NCBI
    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6073073/ (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

  6. “Study: Reading online privacy policies could cost $365 billion a year” — Ars Technica
    https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2008/10/study-reading-online-privacy-policies-could-cost-365-billion-a-year/ (arstechnica.com)

  7. “Influencers Are Being Paid $7K Per Post to Boost Pro-Israel Social Media Content” — Truthout
    https://truthout.org/articles/influencers-are-being-paid-7k-per-post-to-boost-pro-israel-social-media-content/ (truthout.org)

  8. “Microsoft halts services to Israeli military unit amid probe into surveillance of Palestinians” — Reuters
    https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/microsoft-disables-services-israel-defense-unit-after-review-2025-09-25/ (reuters.com)