CEO Today Magazine August 2019 Edition

For author Shoshana Zuboff, this decline in trust is symptomatic of a fundamental shift in the relationship between people and businesses. This relationship used to be pretty simple: businesses would convert raw materials into products and then people would buy them. But in the information age, people are seen as a free source of raw material; our behaviours generate data, which is captured for free and then used to predict how we will behave in the future. These predictions – of what we will buy, where we will go, who we will meet, what we will like – are used by businesses to generate wealth at our expense through mechanisms and algorithms that are both insidious and invisible to us. In Zuboff’s words, ‘we are not the users, we are being used’. When influence becomes invisible In surveillance capitalism, the interests of businesses and people are in hidden conflict. The likes of Facebook and Google benefit the most when their influence is invisible and subliminal. Apple’s recent championing of data privacy is a clear attempt to challenge this view head-on: Apple relies on people to trust its devices to gather, store and share an ever-expanding stream of sensitive personal data, from health and activity tracking to mobile payments and location. Apple CEO Tim Cook has called for the Federal Trade Commission to register all data brokers and enable users to track their data and even to delete it permanently. This would in theory spell the end of surveillance capitalism by putting people in control of their own data. The more power we put in people’s hands, the less we need to trust businesses and institutions to behave responsibly – or competently. But should people be trusted with personal data? Do we trust ourselves? Do we trust each other? Recent coverage of voyeurism amongst Airbnb hosts has revealed that the ‘little guy’ can be even more irresponsible and intrusive than ‘Big Brother’ when it comes to personal data. The likes of Apple and Google have a strong incentive to cultivate trust amongst their user-base: their profits rely on it. But arguably the opposite is true where the likes of Airbnb, Facebook, Instagram, Uber and EBay are concerned. These online community brands begin from the assumption that people can’t be trusted... except to rat on one another. Consequently, they effectively function in a manner similar to intelligence services during the Cold War - encouraging people to surveil their neighbours and maintaining stability through the constant threat of excommunication and denial of service. In doing so, they have evolved surveillance capitalism into a darker, shadier form: an economy of mistrust. How does an economy of mistrust operate? In the economy of mistrust, businesses create profit by outsourcing the policing of behaviour to their online communities: they establish spaces in which people are encouraged to act as judge, jury and executioner. As a result, we have all evolved into a society of peeping toms. The act of recording strangers, judging them and sharing our judgment with other strangers has become commonplace and now comes with a revenue model. Examples exist everywhere. South Korea is in the grip of a spy cam epidemic: 6,470 cases of illegal filming were reported in South Korea in 2017, compared to 2,412 in 2012. Earlier this year, four people were arrested in Seoul for live-streaming the activities of 1,600 unsuspecting hotel guests using spy cams they had installed in 30 hotels. They had earned more than $6,000 selling subscriptions to 4,000 users, many of whom who were willing to pay extra for value-added services like video replay. This is just one tiny example of a burgeoning industry built on catering to humanity’s worst impulses. In response, the South Korean government has set aside $4.5 million to fund patrols of toilets and changing rooms to uncover hidden spy recording and streaming devices. Airbnb has taken the spycam epidemic global. An Irish family found eight hidden cameras at an Airbnb SPECIAL FEATURE 32 “The more power we put in people’s hands, the less we need to trust businesses and institutions to behave responsibly – or competently.”