Data privacy is a critical phenomenon. It is characterised as a state in which an individual’s data remains confidential, including the current era of surveillance capitalism, where individuals constantly provide their data in return for navigating websites and applications owned by tech surveillance capitalist companies on the Internet. This is important and complex at the same time, especially in this era, where individuals’ data can easily be compromised. The seriousness and critical nature of this situation urge us to examine the current situation of individuals’ data privacy within websites and applications owned by tech surveillance capitalist companies. To achieve the results of this investigation, we formulate three hypotheses. 1) Individuals and tech surveillance capitalist companies share the responsibility for demising data privacy. 2) Tech surveillance capitalist companies maximise surplus-value by exploiting individuals’ invaluable data, invaluable data which contains personal and other individuals’ data. And 3) Individuals’ data privacy is demised through the usage of dataveillance and deceptive patterns by tech surveillance capitalist companies. In Hypothesis One, we seek to examine who is responsible for the termination of data privacy: the owners of personal data, surveillance capitalism, or both. In Hypothesis Two, we critically examine the exploitation of invaluable data in software updates and upgrades, new hardware development, and targeted advertising to increase the surplus-value of these companies. In Hypothesis Three, we investigate the tools used by tech surveillance capitalist companies to collect substantially more data than they need. The results of these three hypotheses are highly concerning. The results of Hypothesis One reveal that tech surveillance capitalist companies compromise data privacy, and individuals play a role through their decisions. Factors such as age, education, culture, and economic status shape this behaviour of individuals. Despite concerns about privacy, individuals continue to depend on these companies because of Internet addiction, convenience, and perceived advantages. The results of Hypothesis Two emphasise the conflict perspectives between individuals and tech surveillance companies. While for individuals, personal data needs protection, for companies, it is valuable and must be exploited to gain direct and indirect surplus-value. Finally, the results from Hypothesis Three show that at the collection level, individuals begin to lose the confidentiality of their data through the dataveillance operations of tracing, observing, and seeking data. Deceptive patterns are also used in legal consent forms to collect more data than necessary.
Dalya Raad Al-Ani (Tue,) studied this question.