# Surveillance Capitalism

An economic logic that claims private human experience as free raw material for behavioral prediction — the problem the Independent Internet answers.

**Surveillance capitalism** is the term Shoshana Zuboff gave to an economic order that unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for hidden practices of extraction, prediction, and behavioral influence.

## Source

Named and dissected in Zuboff's 2019 book (see [The Age of Surveillance Capitalism](/docs/surveillance-capitalism.md)).

## Why it matters here

It is the diagnosis the Independent Internet responds to. The Web 2.0 settlement turned users into the product; the structural cure is [decentralization](/wiki/decentralization.md) — self-hosting, on-premises data, and no corporate intermediary positioned to extract. This is why the Independent Internet's principles foreground being *safe*, *ethical*, and free of surveillance.

---

## Backlinks

Pages that link here:

- [The Age of Surveillance Capitalism](/docs/surveillance-capitalism.md) — Zuboff's analysis of an economic logic that claims private human experience as free raw material for behavioral prediction and sale.
- [Decentralization Across the Lineage](/wiki/decentralization-across-the-lineage.md) — How one move — removing the central intermediary — recurs from Licklider's network through the Web and Bitcoin to the Independent Internet.
- [Decentralization](/wiki/decentralization.md) — Designing systems with no central owner or single point of control — the structural core of the Independent Internet.
- [Glossary](/wiki/glossary.md) — Formal definitions of the key terms behind the Independent Internet and Web 4.0, as used across this wiki, with links to source material.
- [Shoshana Zuboff](/wiki/shoshana-zuboff.md) — Scholar of the digital economy who named and dissected surveillance capitalism.
- [Independent Internet (Web 4.0)](/wiki/web4.md) — The web forgot who it was for. Web 4.0 — the Independent Internet — is a resilient, self-hosted internet people own and control. Explore the research.