Digital surveillance works because people voluntarily expose themselves

Evidence

Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon isolated inmates from each other for disciplinary purposes and prevented them from interacting. In contrast, the occupants of today’s digital panopticon actively communicate with each other and willingly expose themselves. That is, they collaborate in the digital panopticon’s operations. Digital control society makes intensive use of freedom. This can only occur thanks to voluntary self-illumination and self-exposure (Selbstausleuchtung und Selbstentblößung). Digital Big Brother outsources operations to inmates, as it were. Accordingly, data is not surrendered under duress so much as offered out of an inner need. That is why the digital panopticon proves so efficient. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 32

Categorization

• XREF: Extends Foucauldian panopticism as developed earlier in the exposure-of-life threads; reverses the model by noting inmates now cooperate. — connects to: Surveillance capitalism exploits the human hunger for recognition — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 797; Social media surveillance is symmetrical, making watchers desire being watched themselves — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update: Celebrity, Publicity,…, 571; Perceived threat makes the public accept surveillance over privacy — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2332 (+6 more)

Related

• The digital panopticon fails to register as surveillance because its subjects feel free (similarity 0.85)
• Digital self-tracking makes each person a self-surveilling guard and inmate in one. (similarity 0.84)

Broader Connections

• Surveillance capitalism exploits both extraction and our voluntary surrender via interfaces #corroborates (0.95) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 734
• Surveillance capitalism exploits the human hunger for recognition #expands (0.88) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 797
• Perceived threat makes the public accept surveillance over privacy #expands (0.80) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2332
• Surveillance is repackaged in the language of personal freedom to gain acceptance #expands (0.78) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 80
• Social media surveillance is symmetrical, making watchers desire being watched themselves #complicates (0.75) — Alice E. Marwick, Status Update, 571
• Surveillance capitalists deliberately conceal how their platforms monetize user behavior #contradicts (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1411