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Cory Doctorow's New Book Explains 'How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism' (medium.com) 76

Blogger/science fiction writer Cory Doctorow (also a former EFF staffer and activist) has just published How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism — a new book which he's publishing free online.

In a world swamped with misinformation and monopolies, Doctorow says he's knows what's missing from our proposed solutions: If we're going to break Big Tech's death grip on our digital lives, we're going to have to fight monopolies. That may sound pretty mundane and old-fashioned, something out of the New Deal era, while ending the use of automated behavioral modification feels like the plotline of a really cool cyberpunk novel... But trustbusters once strode the nation, brandishing law books, terrorizing robber barons, and shattering the illusion of monopolies' all-powerful grip on our society. The trustbusting era could not begin until we found the political will — until the people convinced politicians they'd have their backs when they went up against the richest, most powerful men in the world. Could we find that political will again...?

That's the good news: With a little bit of work and a little bit of coalition building, we have more than enough political will to break up Big Tech and every other concentrated industry besides. First we take Facebook, then we take AT&T/WarnerMedia. But here's the bad news: Much of what we're doing to tame Big Tech instead of breaking up the big companies also forecloses on the possibility of breaking them up later... Allowing the platforms to grow to their present size has given them a dominance that is nearly insurmountable — deputizing them with public duties to redress the pathologies created by their size makes it virtually impossible to reduce that size. Lather, rinse, repeat: If the platforms don't get smaller, they will get larger, and as they get larger, they will create more problems, which will give rise to more public duties for the companies, which will make them bigger still.

We can work to fix the internet by breaking up Big Tech and depriving them of monopoly profits, or we can work to fix Big Tech by making them spend their monopoly profits on governance. But we can't do both. We have to choose between a vibrant, open internet or a dominated, monopolized internet commanded by Big Tech giants that we struggle with constantly to get them to behave themselves...

Big Tech wired together a planetary, species-wide nervous system that, with the proper reforms and course corrections, is capable of seeing us through the existential challenge of our species and planet. Now it's up to us to seize the means of computation, putting that electronic nervous system under democratic, accountable control.

With "free, fair, and open tech" we could then tackle our other urgent problems "from climate change to social change" — all with collective action, Doctorow argues. And "The internet is how we will recruit people to fight those fights, and how we will coordinate their labor.

"Tech is not a substitute for democratic accountability, the rule of law, fairness, or stability — but it's a means to achieve these things."
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Cory Doctorow's New Book Explains 'How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism'

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  • If Big Corporations are evil because they are monopolistic, then what about Big Government? Arguably, government is a far greater threat than any business. What business can take your money by force? What business can literally throw you in jail for life? What business can force everyone to follow its own administrative procedures and dictates, at will? What business can literally go to war and kill people, legally?

    And before anyone says it, yes of course Big Government is representative. But Big Business i

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      Cory Doctorow is arguing for bigger government to take over the duties from big corporations so they nor the government that mandates them would be accountable.

      He's basically arguing for government-mandated monopolies, like Ma Bell, he just doesn't realize it that's what he's rooting for.

      The only way out of this mess is to vote with your dollars, you don't have to use Facebook, you don't have to use Twitter, you don't have to use AT&T, they're just convenient to be there. You can set up your own communi

      • fundamental problem with your reasoning: governments are chosen democratically. corporations are owned by a few too wealthy too powerful individuals.

        • That used to be true but now governments are chosen by angry mobs of stupid people. Not sure if that's better or just different.
          • No they're now being chosen by a handful of billionaires
            • by shanen ( 462549 )

              Not a bad FP, but I think this is the first approach to insight in the resulting discussion. Too brief to earn the mod points, but I'll try to clarify a bit. (But I'll probably wax too verbose to earn the mod points.)

              Investing in government has become extremely profitable. For a few thousand bucks you can get the ear of a cheap politician, and if he listens to you, then he can rig the game in ways that may profit you by millions of bucks. For a million bucks "invested" with cunning lobbyists, the anticipate

          • um - that's STILL "Democracy"

            Which is why the US is a Republic.

          • by sjames ( 1099 )

            Still chosen by billionaires. It's just that now the billionaires direct an angry mob of useful idiots.

        • fundamental problem with your reasoning: governments are chosen democratically. corporations are owned by a few too wealthy too powerful individuals.

          That's as may be. The converse difference is I can choose whether to do business with a company. I have no choice but to go along with my local government.

          That's been the raging debate for a century: which monopoly do you trust/fear more? Facebook or the US government? And who gets to choose?

          • by rbrander ( 73222 )

            It's pretty hilarious to claim that you can choose to not do business with a company, when the discussion is about giant monopolies.

            Just TRY to get a job in IT despite your refusal to use Apple or Microsoft or the rest of the monopolies. There are a tiny number of jobs in strictly FOSS work, but it's not a practicable life plan for most.

            I worked for a publicly-owned water utility; the top bosses made about $200K or so. So did the top bosses at our sister department, the electrical utility. Then it was

        • by Jack9 ( 11421 )

          > fundamental problem with your reasoning: governments are chosen democratically.
          > corporations are owned by a few too wealthy too powerful individuals.

          All forms of government result in both corporations and government being owned by a few too wealth too powerful individuals.

          • Maybe in America's broken democracy. many countries severely limit the amount of money that could be donated by companies or persons.

      • There are fundamental differences between corporations and government.

        For one, government is (supposed to be) democratically elected and representative.

        Then government is not supposed to maximize profit, but to provide (neutral) organizational foundation for everyone to thrive.

        Finally, a government is global in scope, includes everybody in a more or less symmetric fashion (everyone's a subject, everyone's equal). Corporations, by definition, have an intrinsic "us" versus "them" division, and everyone of "th

        • by guruevi ( 827432 )

          There is sufficient "government" that isn't elected or electable. Every "department of something" is not elected and filled with leftovers from decades old administrations. Hence why 'government' is so damn inefficient at everything.

          • Government is supposed to be inefficient. That's a feature, not a bug.

            You can't be "efficient" and have a democratic process (i.e. make sure essentially everyone agrees) at the same time. If you want efficiency, you get a sultan or a king with absolute powers, but that' pretty much the antithesis of democracy.

            As for the "undemocratic" parts of government: in theory they're accountable to whomever you've elected as your representative, so they're democratic, too. The fact that USA has an utterly broken democ

            • by guruevi ( 827432 )

              You can get more efficient by simply eliminating departments that don't do anything useful (Department of Education, Agriculture, FDA, ...). There is something inherently democratic by being able to replace the entire power structure every time a president gets into power.

              • You can get more efficient by simply eliminating departments that don't do anything useful (Department of Education, Agriculture, FDA, ...).

                Seriously?! You live in what has to be the worst education* from all "1st world" developed countries, and your suggestion is to abolish the department responsible for improving it?

                *with the notable exception of high-profile university resrarch.

                • by guruevi ( 827432 )

                  Show me where the Department of Education has improved anything. Since its inception, graduation rates have not improved, the level of education has not improved, schools haven't gotten cheaper. It's taking $1.4 Trillion per year away from schools into a department with 4000 employees and it's not even deciding on the curriculum of schools, individual states do.

      • by pnutjam ( 523990 )
        The only place I can get certain information from parts of my school district is facebook. They had a major announcement about classes and it was made round 9am on twitter, if you happened to be following, and around 5pm via "official" channels. WTF?!
    • by ChrisMaple ( 607946 ) on Sunday August 30, 2020 @11:12AM (#60455402)
      The overall burden of government is a problem, but single point control is a bigger problem. Most governmental decisions should be at the town/city level, and only problems that can't be solved there should be handled at the lowest of county, state, or country level as necesary. This allows for escaping local tyrannies.
    • Sorry but this is a pretty damn naive and comically over-simplified view of both corporations and governments.

    • by shanen ( 462549 )

      If Big Corporations are evil because they are monopolistic, then what about Big Government? Arguably, government is a far greater threat than any business. What business can take your money by force? What business can literally throw you in jail for life? What business can force everyone to follow its own administrative procedures and dictates, at will? What business can literally go to war and kill people, legally?

      And before anyone says it, yes of course Big Government is representative. But Big Business is representative, too -- just with your dollars, not your votes.

      Arguably, all the evils of a monopoly are in fact /amplified/ when they are exercised by a governing body. So, while we're out there champing at the bit to overthrow evil businesses, let's start with the biggest, baddest one of them all.

      Not a bad FP and the Off-Topic mod it currently shows feels like attempted censorship, so I'm quoting the FP by davide marney here. The discussion seemed productive and I added one of my typically verbose comments within.

      However for now I want to note that it's rather small to call it a book. Less than 30 thousand words. Print preview says 126 pages, but I'm going to try to read it without killing an actual tree. How big was that large (and quite good) Atlantic article on Qanon?

    • by sjames ( 1099 )

      What business can take your money by force?

      Many, unless you're prepared to live as a naked hermit in a cave.

      Do you think the bank can't legally send goons with guns to drag you from your house? Try not paying your mortgage. What's the Libertarian "solution"? Allow the bank to hire private goons with guns instead! I'm sure they'll be much kinder and gentler than the sheriff who needs your vote next year.

      Write a bad check at the grocery store (or a perfectly good check that the bank screws up and won't honor) and just see if goons with guns don't even

    • ... far greater threat ...

      While the US government is the biggest buyer in the USA, it has far less power than the rest of the domestic market. This makes its subservience to rich people so galling. Or, because it has far less power, it is subservient.

      ... the biggest, baddest one of them all.

      A certain broadcast network, dedicated to the principle 'rich people have more rights than you' has been shouting "evil government" for over 40 years but political will has dwindled to nothing. Politicians need corporations to buy their re-election, so corporations will only fund mon

  • by rmdingler ( 1955220 ) on Sunday August 30, 2020 @07:46AM (#60455002) Journal

    If we're going to break Big Tech's death grip on our digital lives...

    It is not as if the general public is unaware their digital footprints are being tracked, compiled, and sold. It's not a secret anymore, if it ever was.

    People, by and large, care less about exchanging their right to privacy for convenience and security than what brand of car is parked in their driveway.

    • by pedz ( 4127433 )

      Unfortunately, that seems to be true.

      A recent Money podcast by the Motley Fool said exactly that when talking about Zoom. "I don't care if they monitor what I say. I just care that it works" and the fellow "Fools" on the podcast chimed in with agreement.

      It might change when they discover that Zoom (or CCP) has started making their life harder based on what they have heard from the corporate secret Zoom meetings but by that point, it may be too late. And there could easily be so much cognitive dissonanc

  • Today's Dilbert (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pedz ( 4127433 ) on Sunday August 30, 2020 @08:09AM (#60455028)
  • Power heirarchy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Sunday August 30, 2020 @08:19AM (#60455054) Homepage Journal

    I want to point something out to the community.

    Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) was one of the Democratic presidential candidates earlier this year. She's smart, well-spoken, and accomplished(*). She did *very* well in the first debate, which got a lot of press and interest in her campaign

    ... and that evening after the debate Google suspended her advertising account with no explanation. Google was completely unresponsive to the campaign asking to be reinstated, asking what they did wrong, asking what they needed to do to bring it back into compliance, etc.

    About 8 hours later the campaign account was reinstated. Again, with no explanation.

    This came to light recently when the subsequent court case [nytimes.com] was dismissed by the judge on the grounds that Google did not infringe on her first amendment rights because Google is not the government.

    This is a cut-and-dried example of a corrupt heirarchy - the type of power structure that the post-modernists keep warning us about. If you studied post-modernist theory in college (many people have) or maybe have a related degree (many people do), then this is one place where you can direct your efforts to improve society.

    To be blunt, the direct result of this power manipulation by Google is a weak Democratic presidential candidate who might not be able to defeat Trump.

    Other examples of this were in the news and had the same outcome: Bernie Sanders could have defeated Trump in the 2016 election, and he might have done so in this election - except for political power manipulation.

    Along with rioting and looting, can the post-modernists please turn their attention to the real power brokers in our society, and work towards giving us fair elections?

    This is completely relevant to the OP: Google is now so big that they engage in political manipulation.

    Google needs to have their leash yanked, big time.

    (*) I'm not (and never was) a supporter, only pointing out the situation, and credit where credit is due: she's a perfectly acceptable candidate.

    • Thanks for the insight. I've seen a lot of Google/Twitter manipulation targeting the 'right' but had no idea Gabbard fell victim as well.

      We hear so much about minor foreign interference - whole documentaries have been made, millions spent on farcical investigations, and four years of theater in Congress - yet the story that's not being told is far more concerning to me.
    • by dargaud ( 518470 )
      Not that I disagree with anything you say (I did learn something), but WTF is a post-modernist ?!? To me it's some kind of ugly-ass worthless art or architecture; I've never heard the term used in the context of politics.
    • Not that accomplished. Got the position because daddy is a senator and politics in Hawaii is broken.

    • Re:Power heirarchy (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Sunday August 30, 2020 @02:07PM (#60455920) Homepage Journal

      Japan has something like what you might get if you decided to regulate this area. Politicians are not allowed to pay for any media coverage, including TV, radio and newspaper adverts. They are given free time on major TV networks and every candidate or party gets the same amount of time.

      The law is in need of updating due to social media and internet advertising. One interesting effect is that you see a lot of posters for politicians, since those are not regulated. The cost of campaigning is much lower but the rules on fundraising and donations are much stricter too.

      It doesn't necessarily produce "better" results, depending on your definition of better. The same party has been in power for most of the preceding 60 years. At a more local level though it seems to have a positive effect.

      • It doesn't necessarily produce "better" results, depending on your definition of better. The same party has been in power for most of the preceding 60 years.

        Naturally. Anything that limits private campaign spending is going to favor incumbents, who are already well-known and constantly in public view and thus don't need to spend money to get their messages out, over potential challengers. If you want the system to be fair then you need something like sortition [wikipedia.org], which doesn't depend on campaigning or voting to select a suitable representative.

    • Keep in mind in the debates, the candidates kept trying to one up each other on how to best hurt the big tech companies unless they banned harrassment. This is a grotesque violation of the First Amendment.

      And it took 0 seconds to start screaming political opponents should be silenced because those posts were harrassing, or "dangerously wrong", or something. Just silence my political opposition.

      "And you'd better do it, or section 230 might get deleted, or you broken up as 'too large'." They don't even bot

  • Even Slashdotters are all enamored with their mobile tracking and data collection devices. Nothing in this area is going to change any time soon. Those of us who don't use Google/Amazon/Facebook/Apple are extremely few and far between.
  • ... a copy of a book from a "former EFF staffer and activist". A book that you cannot download a copy of is one that is subject to change. Change after reading, change after commenting on, in an online forum. Especially an online forum where the comments are locked in.

    Just playing the devils advocate here. We really should be able to download a copy, and "protect our right to read" the original.

    Or is this just a news article, and not a book. Let's just admit it. It's not a book.
    • I agree calling it a book is a bit to far, but as to downloading it: right click your mouse/trackpad, select "Save Page As ..."
  • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday August 30, 2020 @09:53AM (#60455130)

    1/ The public is apathetic, and cares more about the shiny-du-jour and posting lolcat pictures than data privacy.

    2/ Corruption: our current elected officials find working with Big Data a much cozier position to be in than working against them.

    Sad, but that's how it is. Get used to dataraping because it ain't going nowhere...

  • by Tangential ( 266113 ) on Sunday August 30, 2020 @09:59AM (#60455140) Homepage
    We're going to do about as much to break up the tech companies as we did to break up the too-big-to-fail banks. The easiest way to have reduced the dangers that the banks posed would have been to have broken them up. Did it happen? No. Nothing really happened other than some trivial changes in reserve requirements. Meanwhile bank mergers continue unabated. The banks (and their money) prevented it and pretty much the same thing will happen with big Tech. We didn't do it to Microsoft (and we should have); Google, Twitter, Facebook etc all run basically unfettered and it isn't going to change. Our politicians are far too motivated by the dollars flowing in to them to do anything to diminish that stream. Not.gonna.happen.
  • It's absolutely foolish to think that breaking up these companies will do anything to stop their abuses. Their entire business model is the problem. Everyone who says break up the "monopolies" is either virtue signalling for political points, or just plain ignorant of the true problems.

    Doctorow says he's knows what's missing from our proposed solutions...political will

    *Facepalm* stupid. Just stupid.

  • Am I the only one that finds it ironic that you have to have an account and be logged in in order to read this book on medium?

    • For me it says "You have 2 free stories left this month. Sign up and get an extra one for free." but where's the "book"? Is it that long blog post (part of an infinite or at least really big scrolling page with tons of other random posts concatenated?

    • If it were really free, he would have posted a PDF on a website, or Usenet.
  • In a two-party system, with the trust-busting party also the pro-choice party, trust busting leads to abortion... is what the ads will say. The ads will highlight the LATE-STAGE PARTIAL BIRTH ABORTIONS, TRILLIONS OF THEM!!1!

    How to fix this?

  • Follow the money (Score:5, Interesting)

    by burtosis ( 1124179 ) on Sunday August 30, 2020 @10:20AM (#60455212)
    I actually laughed out loud at the

    until the people convinced politicians they'd have their backs when they went up against the richest, most powerful men in the world.

    . One trip to opensecrets.org will tell you all you need to know, politicians get the vast majority of their money from these corporations and individuals, not the public. This is why politicians haven’t had the public’s back on any issue for decades. They spend the majority of the time on the phone getting more money and not legislating for constituents. At best, all we get is leftover representation that won’t upset their donors. At this point it’s going to take a constitutional amendment to get the representation back.

  • the existential challenge of our species and planet.

    Give it a break, Doctorow. Your opinion isn't that important, and we're not on the verge of self-destruction.

  • So says the Pot.
    Enable uBlock origin or use the Brave browser to see how many trackers are blocked.

    uBlock reports 48 items blocked, and the number is still growing -- so it may be the same few making repeated attempts
    Brave reports blocking 11 items.
  • "I'd start a revolution, but I don't have time..." - Close to the Borderline [azlyrics.com], Billy Joel
  • Perhaps he should also focus on "How to Destroy Surveillance Socialism" given that you can't eat, sleep, or work anywhere in China without the State knowing about it.

  • by djp2204 ( 713741 ) on Sunday August 30, 2020 @12:51PM (#60455694)
    Stop using these tech platforms and let them rot away to nothing
  • As he was mentioned here, just read his book about a 17 year old San Francisco kid who was held by DHS The writing seemed targeted at an 11 year old. I read a lot of fiction, and the writing wasn't great. Is this intentional?
  • Most people don't care about big tech's monopolies. Readers of Slashdot care, but most people are not like us. They just want to post their content to social media and have fun, and as long as they can do that, they could care less about antitrust issues.

    Getting people to care is the first step. Good luck with that.

  • by bb_matt ( 5705262 ) on Monday August 31, 2020 @03:48AM (#60457730)

    Exactly how we reached a point where millions, if not billions, felt reliant on a smartphone device, felt the need to constantly engage in social networking, is somewhat of a mystery to me.

    This happened in just a matter of decades - a tiny fraction of time.

    Heck, people 25 and over, can easily recall when there wasn't any social networking, when we didn't carry our devices on us, at all times.

    Do we need it? Do we really need this 'functionality'?
    We coped just fine without it before.

    It is mostly the device in your pocket that is facilitating surveillance capitalism.

    Turn it off and you are no longer consuming. If enough people turn it off, it starts a chain reaction "Heck, hardly anyone I know is on this thing anymore, damn it, I'm ditching it."

  • I think Heinlein addressed attempted governance by what he called technocrats in "The Roads Must Roll" in 1940.

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