Social Media Platforms: Technologies, Companies, Industries

A key argument in this chapter is how social, technological and political forces have aligned to promote data-driven capitalism (also known as surveillance capitalism [Zuboff, The age of surveillance capitalism: The fight for the future at the new frontier of power, Profile Books, 2019]) at the expense of individual privacy. While this question has been significantly addressed from the Global North perspective, the impact this very concept has on the Global South is still playing out. This chapter ends with a discussion of how the tension between freedom and privacy exists as a key driver in ongoing policy debates, and how related concerns about content moderation and the efforts to monitor and limit the spread of problematic content are likewise key concerns for the social media companies.