Surveillance Capitalism

Your location, messages, likes, contacts, and camera roll are already in circulation.

Every click feeds a profile. That profile predicts behavior—and those predictions are sold. Governments buy access. Police request logs. Intelligence agencies don’t need warrants when platforms already collect everything.

In 2019, Twitter handed over data to the U.S. government 11,000+ times. Facebook’s real-time surveillance portal (previously known as “Dark Mode”) lets law enforcement track users without notifying them. In authoritarian regimes, dissidents are arrested using facial recognition pulled from public posts.

This isn’t about “having nothing to hide.”
It’s about the systems hiding what they take.

Encrypted apps help, but if your phone is logged in, metadata still reveals who you talk to, when, and how often. Patterns are enough.

Being online is consenting to visibility.
Surveillance capitalism doesn’t ask. It collects.

That’s why digital organizing feels increasingly risky. Not because people are doing something wrong, but because digital footprints are permanent—and so are the systems watching them. People start to self-censor, and stop sharing.