---
tags: [ecopolsoc, internet, surveillance-capitalism]
created: Monday, January 20, 2025
---

# c9d7492f_requerimiento

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
