The problem is that surveillance capitalism shares a lot of properties with pollution: the effects are typically hidden or ephemeral; the cost to individuals is low while the cost to society is high; and people have largely become complacent if not resigned to the status quo.

And so a) most people don't understand the sheer extent of surveillance capitalism, and b) they don't understand how they're affected by it.

I can't count the number of times I've seen shocked faces when I explained how companies like Acxiom and Experian work. And they've been around for decades! But they operate in the shadows, out of view, and so people simply do not understand how much of their private lives are bought and sold to the highest bidder.

If they understood that--and I mean truly understood it--I suspect the conversation around these topics would be very different indeed.

Meanwhile, large portions of the tech community have a financial motive to want to downplay these issues. "Oh pfft, privacy, so antiquated," they say as they draw down a 300k FAANG salary funded by the harvesting and selling of private information.

And so what's the predominant narrative? Well, the people who are in the best position to understand these issues have a financial incentive to protect the status quo, while everyone else doesn't understand them well enough to form an opinion, and thus the former dominates the discourse.