Word.ws English Dictionary

surveillance capitalism

surveillance capitalism noun: an economic system based on the commodification of individuals' personal data for profit.

Noun

surveillance capitalism (uncountable)

  1. An economic system based on the commodification of individuals' personal data for profit.
    • If you think that not posting these two photos does anything to surveillance capitalism or the platforms that succeed through it, that’s just not right.2019 January 16, Alexis C. Madrigal, “Go Ahead, Post the Stupid Photo of Yourself From 10 Years Ago”, in The Atlantic
    • That’s one way to understand Apple’s empty message about privacy. Tim Cook talks a big game, but at the end of the day, his company is allowing the surveillance-capitalism atrocities it claims to oppose.2019 January 31, Ian Bogost, “Apple’s Empty Grandstanding About Privacy”, in The Atlantic

Origin of surveillance capitalism

Coined by Shoshana Zuboff.

Questions about surveillance capitalism

What does surveillance capitalism mean?
Surveillance capitalism means an economic system based on the commodification of individuals' personal data for profit.
What part of speech is surveillance capitalism?
Surveillance capitalism is a noun.

Words near surveillance capitalism in the dictionary

  1. surveillable
  2. surveillance
  3. surveillance approach
  4. surveillance camera
  5. surveillance cameras
  6. surveillance capitalism
  7. surveillance pricing
  8. surveillances
  9. surveillant
  10. surveillants
  11. surveille

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: surveillance capitalism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “surveillance capitalism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/surveillance_capitalism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.