Shoshana Zuboff Explains Why You Should Care About Privacy

In a wide-ranging interview, the author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” talks about why people should pay attention to how big tech companies are using their information.

By Lauren Jackson

May 21, 2021

It was a grenade lobbed into the tenuous peace between Apple and Facebook — a software update that explicitly asked iPhone users whether an app should be allowed to track their digital movements across the other apps and sites that they use.

Apple pitched the feature, App Tracking Transparency, as a triumph for privacy. But for Facebook, it was an attack striking a key source of revenue: the personal data of its users.

The dispute represents a further deterioration in the relations between the two companies and their chief executives, Mark Zuckerberg and Tim Cook.

In a recent episode of The Daily, Mike Issac, a technology correspondent for The New York Times, asked a question at the heart of this conflict: “Do people care about privacy?” The answer, as he explained, will determine the conflict’s trajectory — and the limitations on Big Tech’s power in a largely unregulated, hypercompetitive fight for market dominance.

After the episode aired, we called someone who thinks deeply about both privacy and the economic forces behind this competition: Shoshana Zuboff, author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.” In the following interview, we ask Ms. Zuboff about the significance of this update in regards to privacy protections long term, the prospect of platform regulation and her vision for a less-extractive digital future.

Our conversation has been condensed and lightly edited.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/21/technology/shoshana-zuboff-apple-google-privacy.html