What is Surveillance Capitalism

Social media is a mega-industry built by systematically monetizing the exploitation of human emotions, reactions, and biases. The authors explain how this industry became so profitable by creating a fear of missing out (FOMO) to command our attention, blending news and content in one feed to keep users 'in-app', and using powerful algorithms to promote more provocative posts, filter content, and trigger the reward centres of our brains. The authors examine how decentralized technologies, including cryptocurrencies, tokenization, and blockchain are being developed and deployed into new social media applications. The authors speculate on how these blockchain-backed startups could challenge the status quo and appeal to new expectations of user privacy, tighter regulation, and a more equitable monetization system.