Google institutionalized surveillance capitalism by simply declaring its right to take experience as data
Evidence
Declaration as invasion: The lack of precedence left us disarmed and charmed. Meanwhile, Google learned the art of invasion by declaration, taking what it wanted and calling it theirs. The corporation asserted its rights to bypass our awareness, to take our experience and transform it into data, to claim ownership of and decisions over the uses of those data, to produce strategies and tactics that keep us ignorant of its practices, and to insist on the conditions of lawlessness required for these operations. These declarations institutionalized surveillance capitalism as a market form.
— Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1078
Categorization
XREF: Echoes the idea of enshrined private property norms as signaling mechanisms — declaration-as-appropriation parallels how institutions establish legitimacy by assertion rather than consent. — connects to: User-controlled privacy blocking is existential to Google because tracking feeds its profit engine — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 433; Google legally framed public spaces as unauthorized surveillance territory — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 444; Google’s declarations form an interdependent edifice of claims to data — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 557 (+9 more)