surveillance capital

The "web 2.0" business model which emerged from Silicon Valley from
approximately 2004 onwards and which was enabled by the advent of
cloud computing. The term was coined by Shoshana Zuboff in 2014
and thereafter entered widespread use as a way of describing the
dominant business model of the internet.

Surveillance capital solved the dot com problem from the late 1990s of
how to monetize the internet in a situation where "nobody will pay
for web services" directly. Or at least, not enough to be profitable.
Instead the idea was that you "pay with your privacy", and in some
cases also your liberty.

By collecting data about how people use the internet detailed personal
profiles could be created which could then be monetized for advertising,
or used by letter agencies for political policing. If you know enough
about someone's habits, preferences and political or religious views
then they become more amenable to social engineering, and this could
be behavioristically automated via machine learning. By the late 2010s
surveillance capital had gone far beyond advertising and was being used
to influence the outcomes of elections or public referenda.
