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Zuboff likens the expropriation of private information by surveillance capitalists to the behaviour of the Conquistadores when they first arrived in South America.

In order to legitimise their actions they were obliged to inform the native inhabitants of their intentions and tell them that they were now subordinate to the Spanish crown.

This provided supposed justification for the violence and brutality that would follow if the natives did not comply. Sometimes the declaration would just be muttered moments before attack.

“Conquest by declaration” is also the technique of Google, she claims. The equivalent of the requerimiento being the opaque and incomprehensible terms of of service, designed not to be read.

These twenty-first-century invaders do not ask permission; the forge ahead, papering the scorched earth with faux-legitimation practices. Instead of cynically conveyed monarchical edicts, they offer cynically conveyed terms-of-service agreements whose stipulations are just as obscured and incomprehensible. They build their fortifications, fiercely defending their claimed territories, while gathering strength for the next incursion. Eventually, they build their towns in intricate ecosystems of commerce, politics and culture that declare the legitimacy and inevitability of all that they have accomplished.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019): 179