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).
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 — 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.