“So What Can We Do?”

This is the final episode for this book.

Over the past four episodes, we’ve mapped the system — what it is, how it works, where it’s spread, and how the same logic operates in different hands in different parts of the world.

Now we get to the last question: knowing all of this, what can we actually do?

It’s the question most readers arrive at by the end of this book. Zuboff spends nearly half of it building the argument — and then, in the final section, offers her answer. I’ll share her answer first, then tell you what I think.

First, a Disappointing Reality

I want to be upfront about something that may frustrate you.

Zuboff doesn’t give you an action checklist. She doesn’t say “delete these apps” or “use this tool to protect your privacy” or “here are five things to do starting tomorrow.”

This isn’t because she doesn’t care about what ordinary people can do. It’s because she believes that framing this as a personal technical defense problem is itself a trap.

Her argument: surveillance capitalism is a systemic problem, not a behavioral one. Even if you deleted every social media account today, switched phones, and paid cash for everything — you would still be living in a world shaped by this system. The information you receive, the behavior of the people around you, the texture of public life — all of it has already been deeply shaped by this logic.

One person opting out doesn’t change how the system operates.

So her answer operates at a larger scale.

Zuboff’s Answer: Name It, Know It, Act

She proposes three levels of response.

The first level: Naming

Before you can fight something, you need to be able to name it accurately.

Before this book, most people described this system using neutral or even positive language — “the digital economy,” “the platform economy,” “data-driven.” These phrases obscure what’s actually happening.

Zuboff coined “surveillance capitalism” precisely to give it a name that reveals its nature. You cannot contest what you cannot name.

She draws a historical parallel. In the early industrial era, child labor, sixteen-hour workdays, and factory pollution were treated as the inevitable price of progress — just how things were. Change only became possible once people named these practices as exploitation, as injustice.

She believes we’re at a similar inflection point now.

The second level: Knowing

Understanding what’s happening is the prerequisite for changing it.

Most of what Zuboff does in this book is exactly this — reconstructing the mechanics of the system in full, so that readers genuinely understand it rather than just vaguely sensing something is wrong.

Her belief: when enough people truly understand how this system works, social attitudes will shift. Just as genuine public understanding of industrial pollution eventually made environmental legislation possible.

The third level: Acting

Here Zuboff’s argument turns toward politics and law.

She argues that the most meaningful change has to come through legislation and regulation. Individual consumer choices can’t move the system. Law can.

She points to several specific directions:

First, data ownership. The data you generate should belong to you, not the platform. Platforms using your data should require genuine informed consent — not terms no one reads.

Second, prohibiting behavioral modification. Large-scale experimental interventions in human behavior should face regulatory oversight, the same way medical experiments require ethical review.

Third, regulating prediction product markets. The behavioral futures market itself should be questioned and constrained.

She compares all of this to the labor movement and the environmental protection movement of the 20th century — both faced enormous commercial opposition, both took decades of sustained social struggle and legislative effort, both eventually changed the rules.

But Is This Actually Possible?

I want to be honest about my reaction to Zuboff’s answer.

It has real force. But it’s a long road.

Labor reform took decades. Environmental legislation took decades. And surveillance capitalism expands at a speed that dwarfs anything from the industrial era.

There’s another complication: driving these changes requires political will. But politics itself has already been deeply penetrated by this system — election advertising, social media’s manipulation of information environments, the dependence of political figures on tech platforms — all of it makes systemic reform harder.

So I think Zuboff points in the right direction. But it’s not a comfortable answer.

What About the Rest of Us?

I know you’re probably still wondering — while we wait for systemic change, which may take a long time, is there anything an ordinary person can actually do?

Here’s what I think.

Complete withdrawal isn’t realistic, and it isn’t necessary. But there’s something you can hold onto — something this system is genuinely afraid of. And that’s awareness.

Zuboff says it directly: individual awareness is the enemy of behavioral modification. The system’s operation depends on you not knowing, or not caring.

When you understand why a particular notification appeared, when you can see what an algorithm is trying to do, when you can recognize which emotional reactions have been engineered — you’ve preserved a degree of autonomy inside the system.

Not immunity. No one is immune. But using these tools with clear eyes is different from being used by them without knowing it.

That’s part of why I make this podcast. Not to tell you what to do — but so that we can, together, understand the world we’re actually living in a little more clearly.

How the Book Ends

Near the end, Zuboff makes an argument I keep returning to.

She says surveillance capitalism’s leaders assume we will accept all of this, the way Steinbeck’s farmers accepted the logic of the banks — because it works, because it’s successful, so its rules must be right, must be inevitable.

But she says: look carefully at the inner logic of this system and you’ll see that’s not true. This system was built by people. Under specific historical conditions. By specific individuals who made specific choices.

It can be changed. They simply chose not to change it.

And we can choose differently.

My Own Takeaway

Let me close with where I landed after finishing this book.

It’s long. It’s dense. Zuboff is a scholar — her arguments are rigorous, sometimes demanding. But the value isn’t just in the information. It’s in the framework — a way of seeing the digital world that, once you have it, you can’t unsee.

After reading it, opening your phone feels different. Scrolling through a feed feels different. Clicking “agree” feels different. Not because you become angry or paranoid — but because you understand what’s behind the interface, why a particular notification appeared at this particular moment, what the real cost of a “free” service actually is.

That clarity, I think, is worth something.

If you can read the original English, I’d recommend it over any translation. Not just because of what gets lost in translation — but because Zuboff’s language itself is precise in ways that are hard to carry across. Many of the key concepts have a force in the original that translation struggles to capture.

And that’s where we leave The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.

Five episodes. From the birth of the system, to its mechanisms, to its expansion, to its different forms in different places, to the question of what we can do.

This is the complete journey through the first book on Let’s Read Together.

The next book will take us somewhere entirely different.

This is Let’s Read Together. I’m Allen.

Last modified on 2026-06-06