Opting out of tracking legitimizes surveillance rather than challenging it

Evidence

The withdrawal of agreement takes two broad forms, a distinction that will be useful as we move into Part III. The first is what I call the counter-declaration. These are defensive measures such as encryption and other privacy tools, or arguments for “data ownership.” Such measures may be effective in discrete situations, but they leave the opposing facts intact, acknowledging their persistence and thus paradoxically contributing to their legitimacy. For example, if I “opt out” of tracking, I opt out for me, but my action does not challenge or alter the offending practice. The second form of disagreement is what I call the synthetic declaration. If the declaration is “check,” the counter-declaration is “checkmate,” and the synthetic declaration changes the game. It asserts an alternative framework that transforms the opposing facts. We bide our time with counter-declarations and make life more tolerable, but only a synthetic alternative vision will transform raw surveillance capitalism in favor of a digital future that we can call home. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1095

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the two forms of disagreement — counter-declaration versus synthetic declaration — central to the book’s proposed response to surveillance capitalism.
• SEED: The ‘counter-declaration vs synthetic declaration’ distinction (check vs checkmate vs changing the game) is a sturdy framework for an essay on why individual privacy measures fail to dent surveillance capitalism.
• XREF: connects to: Paying users for their data would not remedy the harms of continuous surveillance — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 780; The tracking ID persists even after users opt out of targeted ads. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 523; Privacy policies function as surveillance policies in practice — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 782

Broader Connections

• Privacy policies function as surveillance policies in practice #expands (0.78) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 782