Cory Doctorow highlights the conceptual limitations of Shoshana Zuboff's “surveillance capitalism” and details how to dismantle it
The most surprising thing about the rebirth of flat Earthers in the 21st century is just how widespread the evidence against them is.
OneZeroCory Doctorow
Context & Ripple Effects
Since Shoshana Zuboff coined "surveillance capitalism", it has been the default frame for criticizing Big Tech's data practices — but by her own later account she is frustrated with how fragmented the efforts to restrain tech companies have become [[a:834692]]. Cory Doctorow, who has spent years arguing that platform decay stems from eroded competition, regulation, self-help, and worker power rather than data extraction alone [[a:849296]], now takes aim at the concept itself.
The significance is a split inside tech criticism: one camp diagnoses the problem as what companies do with data, the other as the structural conditions that let them lock users in. Doctorow's prescription — mandated interoperability plus stronger personal privacy so individuals can withhold their own histories — is a direct answer to the question Zuboff's framework leaves open: not just naming the harm, but specifying the levers to dismantle it.
First-order effects
Regulators and lawmakers now face two competing templates from prominent critics: Zuboff-style data-extraction framing versus Doctorow's interoperability mandates and privacy-as-self-help, forcing a choice about which lever actually constrains Facebook, Google, and peers.
Privacy advocates gain a concrete mechanism beyond consent rules — Doctorow's point that stronger digital privacy would stop even low-level actors like video clerks from leaking rental histories makes individual data control a dismantling tool, not just a compliance burden.
Second-order effects
If interoperability mandates become the preferred remedy, platform lock-in — the moat behind both surveillance practices and the 'enshittification' cycle Doctorow describes — weakens, pushing incumbents to compete on service rather than captive audiences.
Zuboff's frustration with fragmented restraint efforts gets a structural answer: competition and worker-power restoration address the conditions she identifies without requiring every jurisdiction to pass its own data law, potentially consolidating scattered privacy bills around fewer, bigger interventions.
Third-order effects
If Doctorow's diagnosis holds, the center of gravity in tech regulation shifts from privacy consent regimes toward antitrust and interoperability — the same conclusion reached by the books arguing big tech grew powerful by ducking regulation and strangling competitors, not by software disruption alone.
The intellectual split could harden into rival policy coalitions: a data-governance camp built on Zuboff's framework and a structural-power camp built on Doctorow's, with which side wins determining whether the next decade of tech law targets extraction or market structure.
The trend: Tech criticism is splitting between data-extraction framings like Zuboff's and structural-power framings like Doctorow's, and the winner will shape whether regulation targets what platforms collect or how markets are structured.
You've probably heard Zuboff's excellent coinage “Surveillance Capitalism” and perhaps you've read the paper it was introduced in, or the book that it led to. Today, I've published a response to that book, “How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism.” https://onezero.medium.com/... 1…
Here's the book-length post from @doctorow (a) explaining that surveillance capitalism does, in fact, exist and (b) offering a proposal for how to destroy it. https://onezero.medium.com/...
Love that @Medium is doing another book! The Big Disruption was turned down by trad publishers 7yrs ago. They said no one was interested in reading fiction about tech/the valley. But Medium bought the MS, created beautiful art, and put it in the hands of hundreds of thousands. ht…
One nice thing about publishing a book online is that the reviews come in the next day “Do not miss.” “Truly excellent analysis.” “Fantastic.” “Exactly as good as everyone's been saying.” An indie rock band called it “incredible.” It's all true, too: https://onezero.medium.com/..…
Read Doctorow's new book on how to destroy surveillance capitalism. Listen to @machinekillspod new episode on dismantling Zuboff's concept of Surveillance Capitalism. Then ascend to a higher plane of thought. https://podcasts.apple.com/... https://twitter.com/...
I have a (free) new book out! “How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism” is an anti-monopolist critique of Big Tech that connects the rise of conspiratorial thinking to the rise of tech monopolies and proposes a way to deal with both: https://onezero.medium.com/... 7/ https://twitt…
This very long but essential read by @doctorow summarizes *everything* you need to understand about the world now. (warning: unreadable in @pocket) Ironically, it's published on Medium. Hey Cory, is there an RSS where we can follow all of your writings? https://onezero.medium.com…
I have a (free) new book out! “How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism” is an anti-monopolist critique of Big Tech that connects the rise of conspiratorial thinking to the rise of tech monopolies and proposes a way to deal with both: https://onezero.medium.com/... 10/ https://twit…
Reading about the crisis of expertise in health (among other things) in @doctorow's new book, I'm wondering to what extent it feeds on our perceived or actual individualization of health risks. https://twitter.com/...
[Don't think] of FB as a company that has figured out how to show you exactly the right ad [. Instead, it] has figured out how to make you slog through an endless torrent of arguments [that] make you miserable [to show] you one ad that you respond to. -@doctorow https://twitter.c…
Today in publishing experiments: @ozm published its first book—written by @doctorow and edited by @bcmerchant—premiering new Medium features like mobile place-saving, web table-of-contents, and a forthcoming print edition. https://twitter.com/...
Really important thread. Please read it if you care about surveillance capitalism, the power of big tech companies, and what's wrong with our economy. https://twitter.com/...
By all means read this (extremely lengthy) post by @doctorow - not least because he rightly points out that surveillance capitalism isn't some “rogue capitalism” (it's just capitalism) - but if you truly want to destroy surveillance capitalism tomorrow: https://ar.al/... https://…