Presentation Summary
This is a personally driven community presentation from my work experience on the effects of current forms of technology. In it, I argue that big players like Google and Facebook build predictive profiles that are then sold to advertisers who then attempt to influence individual behavior for commercial/political gain. These business models have quietly reshaped society without public knowledge or consent. Surveillance Capitalism is not an inevitable feature of modern life, but a specific and correctable situation, one that requires informed and persistent civic engagement to reverse.
Vistor’s Note: I presented this in person here in my area in July of 2026. I also plan to host a zoom presentation of this material. See the bottom of this page for links to the material and to sign up for any future zoom or in person presentations. You are free to download and use this material to bring awareness to the harmful effects of Surveillance Capitalism. I do ask that you attribute me as the original author.
Much of this presentation is about slightly altering our thinking. How we think can have a big impact on what we wish to see in the world.
It has frequently been noticed that the surest long-term result of brainwashing is a peculiar kind of cynicism - an absolute refusal to believe in the truth of anything
— Hannah Arendt
Why did I include this quote?
[!Warning] In my attempt to make the argument that unrestricted surveillance capitalism can be used as a tool to usher in a movement of Authoritarianism, some of this material might be psychologically disturbing. Under the right conditions, like the conditions we are seeing today, destructive concentration of power can happen in any political party, though it may take on different forms.
Who Am I
- I’m Scott Larson. I am a computer professional who has been serving Santa Rosa and the surrounding areas.
- I started helping people with computer technology independently in 2007.
- I write about the benefits and weaknesses of various forms of technology and its philosophical underpinnings.
My Story
About 20 years ago, I read an article from a Hip Hop blogger that received an anonymous letter about a clandestine meeting between music industry executives and promoters.
The author of the letter was thrown out of the meeting for expressing hostility to a plan of artificially elevating gangster rap over other hip-hop music with the goal of creating a prison pipeline that some of the top music execs we’re invested in.
Now, this story is mostly considered an urban myth. But if you look at the history of the private prison system, there are similarities to that timeline of events.
 Reddit comment about the “Secret Meeting” story
This Reddit commentor in 2019 agreed that something was off during that time period. Other commentors from that time tell a similar story.
Looking at my troubled young adult years, this Rap Music story reminds me of the music that influenced me. I wonder if my understanding of the world was shaped by the music I listened to.
Presentation Research: Music as a generational way to express the difficulties of our time. As an aside, are we lacking political music in our current era?
This story, true or not, reminds me of what is happening with the pervasive parts of technology. Always-online systems and services gather data, and this data is slowly used to shape society without our knowledge or consent.
March 1971: Daniel Ellsberg, released the Pentagon Papers. Nixon used his position to go after him and cover it up. Nixon resigned after public pressure.
NOW: We have an administration that, as far as I can tell, is operating unlawfully with complete impunity. And neither party in congress is willing to stop it.
Think about where we’re are right now
Consumerism has slowly taken over our way of life. Now we are confronted with an Authoritarian political and financial system that works together to disenfranchise its own people.
Consumerism has been impacting society slowly over time for the last 50 years. With our limited understanding of how this data is used, we have been largely driving down this road unaware.
Ethics of technology
Ethics of technology relates to:
- Hardware/Software Design Impact: How our choices and behavior become effected by the design and implementation of technology (Is technology being designed to prevent choice?).
- Human-technology relations Impact:How technology impacts social relationships (Example: are there surveillance aspects of technology that cause a fear of speaking out?)
In my profession I:
- Perform risk assessments of technology: When I find harmful features I recommend competing alternatives, or provide a report to my customers on my concerns
- Observe how technology shapes human behavior: I write about how harmful technology impacts culture and human agency
- First-party = companies like Google or Amazon that offer influence-related services to organizations that want to advertise to consumers (You)
- Second-party = Advertisers, or any institution that pays a First-party to gather data for profit
- Third-party = Consumers
Why am I doing this?
(good question, LoL JK)
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Freedom: I like being free to decide what I want to see on my computer; by extension, I want my customers to also have that choice (Currently that’s not the case)
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Responsibility: I want technology to be designed around principles that benefits humanity, not destroys it. I want society to have a say in how our technology progresses
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I care about my daughter’s future: I want to do something about this for the future generation.
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Making my life harder: It’s more difficult to support my customers’ objectives when technology is designed specifically to obscure choice to push people into harmful/unwelcome products and services later on when you are unaware
I have been noticing trends
Enshitification happens when the customer becomes the product. When attention and information is sold as a product the user experience morphs from something useful to something exploitative.
Trend 1: You are no longer the customer (Even though by all appearances it looks that way)
Predatory pricing is an illegal antitrust business strategy where a firm deliberately sets its prices extremely low, often at a loss, to drive existing competitors out of the market or deter new entrants
Trend 2: Many modern devices are designed with data capture capabilities. This enables manufacturers to operate at a loss harming small businesses who develop safe competing technologies.
Trend 3: These data-capturing abilities can be used to elicit reactions causing divisiveness with the goal of commodifying our attention
Trend 3 Example: We spend energy fighting unwanted features and processes, with those processes being used as data-gathering points of reference to decide how much a person will tolerate
What I don’t like about modern technologies
- Smart technologies: Many are designed to steal attention, reduce our ability to understand relationships between our technology, each other, and the world
- Companies are using adversarial incentives in hardware design to mine data from private life knowing that it degrades society
- These attention stealing methods remain hidden behind End User License Agreements(Consumer Impacting) and Non-Disclosure Contracts(Minimizes Whistle blowing). Makes determining motives difficult.
What is Surveillance Capitalism?
A business model that mines behavioral data to be packaged into “prediction products”. This data eventually ends up in the hands of commercial predators to influence society for commercial gain.
Key Aspects of Surveillance Capitalism
Behavioral Prediction: Companies like Google and Facebook collect behavioral metadata from activity online.
Focusing on patterns that reveal information about a user’s habits which is then used later to finger print individuals. The goal is to predict future choices and behaviors.
Behavioral Modification: Beyond predicting, this model often seeks to nudge or modify user behavior for commercial gain, such as driving consumers to specific locations or products. (Minor Example)
Ubiquitous Surveillance: Data is harvested not just from online searches, but from smartphones, smart home devices, and wearables.
Deliberate Non-Transparency: Typically corporations will hide this illegal activity by not disclosing how their products gather data, leaving users in the dark. Once the damage is done it’s next to impossible to obtain remedy.
Examples of damage range from bad actors using purchased data to scam victims, to steering election results by gaming social media.
Surveillance Capitalism is often described as an “knowledge coup” undermining personal privacy and potentially threatening democratic values by favoring financial interests over individual autonomy.
- These systems don’t necessarily capture your personal information, like name and phone number, to track you (which is how they get around most privacy laws).
- Instead, they build profiles based on your behavior patterns and use that as a fingerprint to engage with you when you are interacting with any of these products or services.
Famous example: It was found that a teenager purchased pregnancy products around the beginning of her second trimester.
A prediction model was used to build a profile of her pregnancy. That system was used to mail maternity related advertisements before she told her family she was pregnant.
Current applications of this technology
Cost Subsides: Marketing to powerful advertising companies is one of the ways costs are subsidized to the consumer. Many products are built and deployed by any company wishing to know more about their customers which is why the cost of many technologies over the years are increasingly sold at a loss.
Harmful: Creates artificial pricing decreases which has the opposite effect of making competing product prices higher, consolidating power amongst bad actors in the market.
The primary focus of designing harmful products is to increase the types and amounts of data collecting inputs
Harmful: Products are not designed specifically with your interests in mind. This increases the likelihood that products are designed against your wishes or needs, A feature might be taken away after the purchase, decreasing your freedom and control over the products and services you purchase.
Benefits of this Technology
There are some good side effects of these practices: A good example of a possible trade off is driving directions. Mapping service use mobile phones to gauge traffic jams and providing alternative routes.
But many of these harmful practices involve selling metadata to advertisers, devaluing purchasing power and negatively impacting agency.
In the long run, when profiles of each customer are created to track future habits, those profiles can be used to take away the power of society. When the product focus is on improving the ability to extract information from society rather than developing new products that improve society, we are all harmed.
Closing Thoughts (Awareness and Empowerment)
Unless we have real representation in our government. Companies don’t have vested interest in protecting privacy.
Your behavior becomes the resource for first-party companies to design democracy-harming products and keep efforts in the dark about how it shapes our society.
With the right information about behavior, first-party companies can sell their prediction products to governments and political candidates to destabilize online discourse and steer elections.
Because these companies don’t share what they are doing with this data or how they are developing these products, it takes mistakes from these bad actors to learn how this technology progresses over time.
If you want to understand how democracy can be shaped in a harmful way over time, see the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal in the pamphlet for more information about this 2012 data breach.
What we can do
Behavioral Awareness
Ultimately, these harms are brought about by our cultural pathologies. Here are some psychological profiles that I think keep these problems going.
[!note] Many of these profiles are cultural problems. They are not easy to resolve. But by changing our behavior, little by little, on an individual level, we can slowly shift the balance.
See the Pamphlet for more information on these topics.
Externalizing Responsibility: Refuse to blame other people, parties or systems. Accept responsibility for our part in the problem through our actions or inactions.
Social Norms Acquiescence: Going along with cultural norms that put you in a divisive position of being right and others being wrong, to dominate a person or situation.
Sentimental Behavior Indulgence: Feeding off of outrage emotionally as a way to feel like something is being done, while outwardly doing nothing to decrease the level of harm.
Action might look different for each individual. We all come from different walks of life and have different skill sets.
Responding to National or Regional calls for safety: Calls to support initiatives, or bills to increase security at the expense of freedom, make us less safe. Trading security for freedom reduces our ability to act.
Giving away our power to act over to people or institutions that may have agendas that run contrary to our own might not be in the best interests of a free society
Exercise Choice
I’m a firm believer that the tools we use shape how we relate to the world. We can decide to stick with tools that circumvent our will to act, or try something new and empowering.
One of those tools is the software that runs on your computer called the Operating System.
- Currently, the Microsoft Windows Operating System has a monopoly on the PC market, but that’s changing. Open Source, Free software (as in Freedom-generating) like Linux has come a long way.
- The Linux Operating System works like Windows or MacOS, without all the junk. Its designed from user-centered and choice perspective.
- Recently, Microsoft and Apple have been designing new versions of Windows and MacOS with AI features.
- In my experience, the way these AI features are designed and forcibly deployed take away user control.
Certain technologies driven by AI improve many aspects of our lives, especially in the medical industry.
But without transparency, we don’t have a say in how these technologies impact our lives.
Awareness
Our psychological blind spots can often prevent us from seeing a problem. We don’t want to believe our lives are exploitable.
The organizations that engage in harvesting data usually have incentives to operate in the dark despite our inability to see what’s right in front of us, to keep the money flowing.
Knowledge is power: Voicing our concerns with others is powerful. I encourage each of us not to buy into the politically correct belief that we can’t talk about these important topics with one another.
The view that everything is a political ideology is pushed onto society to keep us divided and prevents our ability to organize.
At the same time, discourse should be respectful. Having beliefs doesn’t make it right to assume we have all the answers and impose them on others. We need to listen to each other with curiosity, rather than wanting to change each other’s viewpoints.
To properly hold these companies accountable and steer them in the right direction, we need a stronger focus on ending Citizens United, and we need active enforcement of antitrust laws.
See the pamphlet for more information on organizations you can support to help make these initiatives happen.
It’s been my experience that persistence in supporting a better world, through action, will eventually yield results.
We can’t rely on government initiatives to do that for us, especially now; we each need to invest time in making the world a better place if we want to see improvements.
Conclusion
- Data gathering is a complex problem because we receive many benefits from these technologies in society.
- With the recent lawlessness in our political and corporate institutions, I’m starting to wonder if the benefits are worth the trade-offs.
If you are interested in learning more about gaining Freedom with the technology you use, please scan the QR code on the pamphlet, and I can keep you up to date on future events.
Reflections and Questions
- How does this make you feel?
If you can reflect on how you feel about this, we are already making progress.
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What are some things this tech might be able to predict about you?
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If we don’t like it, what kinds of life changes need to happen?
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This is not an inevitable extension of Capitalism, but a specific mutation that requires our voice to shape it.
By: Scott Larson Date: 2026-04-03
Welcome and thank you for showing up for this event!
[! hint]
- You can use the backside of the pamphlet to write down questions
- The Presentation should take around an hour to complete
- There will be about 40 minutes at the end of the presentation for questions
- The presentation slides and the pamphlet will be available on my website after the presentation. Use the QR code at the bottom of the presentation to use the form get on my mailing for the links to the materials and notifications about future events. I’ll be hosting a zoom presentation of this material in the near future so if you are interested in attending again online or know people that might be interested send them a link to the form.
Outline
Introduction
Who am I
My Story
Philosophy of Technology
Why am I doing this?
What I don’t like about modern technologies
What is Surveillance Capitalism?
Closing Thoughts (Awareness and Empowerment)
Conclusion
Reflections and Questions
Synopsis
I am a computer professional who has been serving Santa Rosa and the surrounding areas since 2007. I have skills in investigative hardware/software problem-solving and in writing about the benefits and harms of technology.
2026 is going to be a difficult time. Political and social divisiveness is at an all-time high. In this presentation, I explore the pervasiveness of certain consumer products, focusing on the ethical and political ramifications of these products being designed and deployed as a benefit while, at the same time, secretly being used to enrich capitalists and by extension, its partners at the expensive of society.
To help us through this year and to improve our democracy, I advocate for improving education in social and political awareness by drawing on aspects of consciousness that promote self-determination, encouraging people to make informed choices in difficult situations rather than accepting what is.
Summary
This presentation is a primer on the adverse effects of Surveillance Capitalism. Surveillance Capitalism is a system or a set of technologies that aim to glean information from society to profit from individual behavior. Having these systems in place reduces freedom in our society and is a hallmark of Authoritarianism.
Without awareness and action, all kinds of law-abiding behaviors, like protests, are criminalized by governments and corporations that work together to deploy surveillance technologies in an effort to streamline commerce, or, in worst-case scenarios, steal resources from the public. When technology becomes open to surveillance activities, it becomes easier for criminal actors, in and outside the country, to target the vulnerable, like the elderly and children. Let’s work together to make our societies safer by understanding these threats.
Behavioral Awareness
Ultimately, these harms are brought about by our cultural pathologies. Here are some psychological profiles that I think keep these problem going (Please note that many of these are cultural problems that we need to, but are not easy to, resolve by changing our behavior, little by little, on an individual level and stop waiting for others to save us):
- Externalizing Responsibility:
- Blaming other people and institutions for the cause of the problem and not taking responsibility for our part in creating, or allowing the problem to exist (I.E: choosing to ignore the problem by making excuses that its too hard, or it’s too time consuming to resolve)
- Marginalizing people you don’t agree with, or that have a different viewpoint/political stance than you by engaging in, or Indulging in weapons of mass distraction: Attacking people that are using politically incorrect wording, or attacking points of view you don’t like. There is a time and place for everything, Not every situation is an excuse to further your political viewpoint and in many cases, this behavior ends up causing divisions and sidelining resolutions
- Social Norms Acquiescence: Going along with cultural norms that put you in a divisive position of being right and others being wrong with the aim of dominating a person or situation. Psychologically we are wired to move towards ego stability. When situations present themselves that threaten this stability, we tend to attack the situation or messenger
- Sentimental Behavior Indulgence : Feeding off of outrage emotionally as a way to feel like something is being done while outwardly doing nothing to decrease the level of harm. Disregarding external circumstances by refusing to realize that the world is shaped by individual action. Self-righteousness can inadvertently generate cruelty in our society on a large scale. The circumstances around these behaviors might look different for everyone. The important point to be aware of is that difference is an asset for strong societies. We all have varying kinds skills because of our differences. Lets all work together even if we disagree on certain points.
- Responding to National or Regional calls for safety: By demanding safety, or going along with calls to increase safety from the chaos of the world we make the world more susceptible to authoritarians and therefore more dangerous. Avoid the psychological pull to feel safe during dangerous times. Studies show that the perception of feeling safe promotes a false sense of security and increase a willingness to obey in advance. Calls to support initiatives, or bills to increase security at the expense of freedom falls under this category, makes us less safe and takes individual agency away from people and give it to authoritarian leaders and institutions that may have agendas that run contrary to our own.
See the “Source Material” section below for sources I draw from on these topics to craft these suggestions.
Resources (To Learn More)
Understanding the Neuroscience, epistemology, and the metaphysics of the choices we make
Learn how our reliance on excessive left brain thinking is negatively shaping our future and how to deploy more right brain thinking
- The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World (https://www.amazon.com/Matter-Things-Brains-Delusions-Unmaking/dp/1914568060)
- Iain McGilchrist on Civilization and the Divided Mind Interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3jxINCMdRY)
Philosophy of emerging technologies
- Ethics of Emerging Technologies: Scientific Facts and Moral Challenges (https://www.amazon.com/Ethics-Emerging-Technologies-Scientific-Challenges/dp/0471692123)
Surveillance Capitalism
- High tech is watching you (https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/03/harvard-professor-says-surveillance-capitalism-is-undermining-democracy/) | Business School professor emerita says surveillance capitalism undermines autonomy — and democracy
- Shoshana Zuboff on surveillance capitalism (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIXhnWUmMvw)
- Algorithms rule us all (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFF_wj5jmiQ)
- The politics of platform power in surveillance capitalism: A comparative case study of ride-hailing platforms in China and the United States (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/20594364211046769)
Courses
- Freedom Training (https://freedomtrainers.net/trainings/) Learn how to refuse to cooperate with official policies and actions nonviolently. Freedom Training helps us learn how to take away our acquiescence at a massive scale, where undemocratic actors can be stopped in their tracks.
Organizations you can Support
- Fight for the Future (https://www.fightforthefuture.org/) |We harness the power of the Internet to channel outrage into action, defending our most basic rights in the digital age.
- Freedom House (https://freedomhouse.org/)| Freedom House is the oldest American organization devoted to the support and defense of democracy around the world. It was formally established in New York in 1941 to promote American involvement in World War II and the fight against fascism
- Hanna Arendt Center (https://hac.bard.edu/) | The Mission of the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College is to create and nurture an institutional space for bold, risky and provocative thinking about our political world in the spirit of Hannah Arendt.
- American Promise (https://americanpromise.net/) | The “For Our Freedom” amendment is a proposed addition to the U.S. Constitution designed to regulate political spending, ensuring that election expenditures can be limited to protect free speech, fair elections, and political participation. It aims to empower states to regulate campaign financing, countering the effects of decisions like Citizens United
Possible solutions
This technology, and and how it’s being used to surveil society and to take away choice is being accelerated by our current political and cultural climate. This started happen with the advent of the internet and has sharply increased in pace with AI.
The The Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities released an interesting article (https://medium.com/amor-mundi/expropriation-notes-on-the-revolution-to-come-1e4de79a693b) on the problem recently that I think has the potential to improve our situation.
The problem is that we have lost our ability to speak and be heard and if we want those conditions to return, we need to form councils grounded in the experience of people acting together.
Supporting alternative businesses & Unsubscribing from bad actors
- Cut Off the Spigot (https://cutoffthespigot.com) | A search engine that looks category by category to find alternatives to badly behaving companies, big corporations, and private equity firms.
- Resist and Unsubscribe (https://www.resistandunsubscribe.com/) | Americans are feeling powerless to thwart the Trump administration’s assault on our nation’s values. Praised by tech CEOs, surrounded by sycophants, and** enriched by his return to the White House, the president’s actions march on unchecked. Americans, however, have a powerful weapon that has been hiding in plain sight.
Specific reference sources on how these technologies are used
(List abuse sources for: License Plate readers, facial recognition and search/ai )
- Face Off: Law Enforcement Use of Face Recognition Technology (https://www.eff.org/wp/law-enforcement-use-face-recognition) | The adoption of face recognition technologies is occurring without meaningful oversight and being used
- Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal) | How data collection was used to influence the 2016 presidential elections
Source Material
Understanding how Surveillance Capitalism Works
- The age of Surveillance Capitalism (https://www.amazon.com/Age-Surveillance-Capitalism-Future-Frontier/dp/1610395697), Shoshana Zuboff
Behavioral Awareness
- Responding to National or Regional calls for safety | I use this study (https://news.clemson.edu/the-safer-you-feel-the-less-safely-you-might-behave/) to show that reduce harm can actually promote a false sense of security and increase risky behavior.
Presentation Links
- “The Secret Meeting that Changed Rap Music and Destroyed a Generation” (https://www.hiphopisread.com/2012/04/secret-meeting-that-changed-rap-music.html)
Song Against War and Corruption
- For What It’s Worth - Buffalo Springfield
- Imagine - John Lennon
- Eminence Front - The Who
I am a Local Computer Technician who has an interest in empowering people with technologies that enable autonomy. You can find out more about me on my website https://scottRlarson.com. You can email me at inquiries@scottRlarson.com
If you are interested in a philosophical take on this subject, check out my “Andor In Our Time” (https://www.scottrlarson.com/tags/andorinourtime/) video essays on how the Andor TV series from Disney has lessons to teach us about getting more involved in civics.
If you want to learn more about my journey from Windows to Linux, or these technologies you can visit my website and check out my articles on the subject. (scottRlarson.com)
Join my mailing list for notification for future events by scanning the QR code:
- PDF Download: web-presentation-sur-cap-r4.pdf
- PDF Download: pamphlet-presentation-surveillance-capitalism-4.pdf