Episode 220: Snitches Get Riches

April 11, 2023

Central Thesis

Ad-supported media employs pervasive surveillance technologies that exploit personal information for profit, eroding privacy and autonomy. This lucrative practice thrives because it's largely unregulated, leaving individuals vulnerable to manipulation and exploitation.

Key Arguments

• Surveillance is multifaceted and ever-expanding. The episode details potential surveillance mechanisms beyond smartphones, including car systems. Jim posits that car systems potentially gather and transmit data without explicit user consent, similar to smartphone practices.
• Advertisers use sophisticated, coordinated tactics. Jim showcases how advertisers utilize combined location data, demographics, and purchase history to create targeted campaigns across multiple platforms (billboards, radio, mobile). This coordinated effort amplifies ad influence and drives consumer behavior.
• The information economy prioritizes profit over privacy. Jim criticizes the willingness of companies (like banks) to share user data with third parties without offering adequate opt-out options, further enabling surveillance capitalism.
• Cashless businesses enable data collection and exclusion. Jim argues cash-free business disproportionately hurt the unhoused and make consumers open to unprecedented surveillance.
• Current levels of profit are obscene. The host claims current profits are so huge as to be "orbital" and expresses the need for tech CEOs to be sent to other planets.

Notable Passages

• "Surveillance capitalism got started in the world of online advertising. But this has moved way beyond. The way in which it's reaching into these intimate aspects of our lives and our rights and our freedoms is introducing fundamentally new dimensions of social inequality specifically designed to be hidden from us."
• "Advertisers know the more you are exposed to an ad campaign message, the more likely you are to respond with engagement. You know, buy some shit, do some shit, vote for some shit or some shitter. Getting two forms of advertising media harping on the same call to action, the same buy-do-vote shit, especially if the two hits come in quick succession, is advertiser gold."
• "Think of the tech moguls that are literally sinking their ill-gotten gains into space flight, because the sky isn't high enough. To expand the metaphor, I think today's profits are fucking orbital."
• "Until we get together as a society, as a legal body, to outlaw this ubiquitous commercial surveillance shit, it will continue. Because, again, it is very profitable. When it comes to the color of money, a grass will always be greener."

Rhetorical Approach

Jim uses a mix of personal anecdotes (the listener's ad experience, the bank card purchase, his homelessness), hypothetical scenarios (car surveillance), historical etymology (Cockney rhyming slang), satire (exaggerated descriptions of advertising jargon and tech mogul ambitions), and direct quotation (from advertising materials) to illustrate his points. He employs a conversational, informal tone, often laced with expletives, to convey his outrage and frustration.

Connections

• References: Episode 174, Shoshana Zuboff, the movie The Limey, Wikipedia, the London Metropolitan Police Service, Sir Robert Peel.