The Ethical Commerce Revolution
Privacy is the Answer
When looking at the big picture of data protection and digital sophistication, an accelerated action-response pattern reveals itself, and with it, a realisation: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism (2019, Shoshana Zuboffis) may be coming to an end.
For every advancement in data capture, processing and consumption, there has been an answer in the form of data protection laws. The greater its social impact, the sharper its regulatory response. Society has woken up to challenge the Attention Economy, especially the younger generations. As consumer concerns over data collection continue to grow, users data rights elevate and project privacy as an unstoppable trend.
Growth over morals, climate, health or privacy can’t be imagined in a world where 45% of generation Z decline to purchase certain brands because of ethical or environmental concerns. (2021, Deloitte Sustainable Consumer Report).
Shortage of technical workers is also accentuated at companies that have failed to take a bold and clear stand on sustainability, ethics and privacy. Take Facebook’s hiring problems as an example. Facebook’s one-time internal motto, “Move fast and break things”, has for years been subject of parody. This is a company now painted as an example of prioritising growth over what is good for society.
Who could have foreseen that huge brands like Google, Amazon or Facebook (Meta) were to receive such disapproval? The power of these brands established surveillance capitalism as an acceptable practice, justified by market forces, even politics. An enhanced power beyond anything known or even dreamed of before. A power over people, over their lives, over their relations. A power whose growth had to be faced by society’s collective feelings, knowledge and reasoning now in the form of new laws and regulations that demonstrate that the market can’t be forever fooled.
Even at its best, a digital simplification of individuals can’t survive in the present day. Today’s thirst for purpose presents a likeable prediction:
The future of digital is private.
The world has grown fearful, worried and troubled by important vital questions. A collective desire for purpose that can’t co-exist with a reductionist view of users and communities.
Products depend on choices, and choices have invited important moral concepts such as ethics and privacy to the party. In the absence of these, consumers will not trust the brands and products of the future.
Call this revolution a form of progress, one that surpasses simplicity and considers consumers as subjects as opposed to objects, one that judges growth against the immediacy of its monetary goals while favouring moral values.
