• tags :: surveillance capitalism

Notes

• Initial concerns of violations of privacy online were more about government surveillance rather than corporate

• The 90s were an era of what could broadly be described as techno-libertarianism

• Data collection allows for the creation of algorithmically-defined groups, identities assigned to us by a massive data processing computer

  *If a bank says it won’t lend to someone because they’re Black, it’s illegal. But if a bank uses an algorithmic system that ingests a bunch of data and performs an analysis that in effect infers that the prospective borrower is Black—say, they live in a majority-Black zipcode—and then denies them on that basis, they can get away with it.*

  Correct. Discrimination is continuing on the basis of race, gender, and other categories. This kind of discrimination—against groups whose members self-identify and therefore relate to each other and mobilize politically on the basis of that shared identity—is very important. But what I’m trying to get us to pay attention to is the other groups that we have been assigned membership, and through which we experience discrimination, but which we know nothing about.

• Rational discrimination :: when discrimination becomes justified in terms of assessment risk

  • This is simply a proxy for regular discrimination!