"Surveillance Capitalism" Is Not a Fatality

DAs a result, according to Shoshana Zuboff, the risk for our societies is as follows: it becomes possible to encourage individuals to act in a certain way, without their knowledge, and therefore to control them. For example, McDonald's and Starbucks signed contracts with Pokemon Go to attract players into their stores. Some commentators (Evgeny Morozov for example in a long review of the book) considered Shoshana Zuboff's analysis unnecessarily dramatic and negative. Regardless of the validity of her arguments, her book highlights one of the issues at the root of many debates on technology: technology makes control invisible; it reduces the freedom of individuals without them necessarily being aware of it.

In some cases, these are situations of control we are deeply and predominantly opposed to in Europe, such as when the Chinese government uses facial recognition tools to monitor the Uighur population in China. However, in other cases, it is more difficult for us to have a clear and shared opinion. For example, as we show in the latest report of Institut Montaigne on platform workers, Travailleurs des plateformes : liberté oui, protection aussi (this title could be translated as "Platform Workers: Freedom Yes, Protection Too"), the algorithms of on-demand work platforms encourage users to certain behaviours: take a shift at a certain time, pick up a customer in a certain area, be polite in order to keep a score as high as possible, etc. In practice, no one gives orders, but technology and its creators provide invisible and automated control. Thus the question regulator ask themselves: does this control deserve to requalify workers as employees?

One of the reasons why we are uncomfortable with these forms of control is that people using the technology (whether platform workers or Facebook users) do not have visibility into the mechanisms that govern it (which criteria are used for algorithmic management on the one hand, and for content recommendation on the other). Indeed, the invisible dimension of technology is at the heart of its creators’ ideology. As Mark Weisser said in his 1991 article "The Computer for the 21st Century": "The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it."

Hence, a first step for public policies is to increase the visibility that individuals have on the mechanisms that govern the technologies they use. In the recent report of Institut Montaigne on platform workers, we recommend that on-demand work platforms communicate on their terms of use, the parameters taken into account by the algorithms, as well as their effects (for example, the rating criteria and the impact of these ratings on customer contact). This step is essential to ensure regulation of the technology, but it is still insufficient. Change is the result of negotiations between stakeholders, and that is why we also recommend that platforms encourage and facilitate grouping of workers into associations to allow collective grievances and interests to be expressed.

If surveillance as presented by Shoshana Zuboff is a reality, it is not inherent in technological tools. The world she describes is therefore not a fatality (she says so herself). If public authorities are to play a more active role in regulating digital platforms, as Mark Zuckerberg calls for, it is essential they be able to have more visibility on their practices, in order to enable individuals to have access to the information that concerns them. This is an essential first step to understand and shape the structure of "surveillance capitalism".