This is not a problem with technology at all. It has to do with people's morality first and foremost. With Christianity dying in the western world we've found ourselves without a common ground on which we could build on. Values is what connects people fundamentally. If you have a situation in which - and this is the case right now - an average person thinks that his fellow human beings are just biological automatons, that there's no God, that one lives for the sake of satisfying oneself first and often only -- no wonder that this situation enables pathological turds to rise to the top of society. What they do to achieve that is not meritocracy, but exploitation of other people. Psychopaths are the new leadership. Hence the pathology like Surveillance Capitalism emerging on every corner.

Pardon me all that talking about God. Try to thing about it in purely logical terms. Values is something you need to make decisions (as qualifiers). Having none is far worst than deriving some from let's say Christianity. Or whatever source that has been proven to work for a prolonged amount of time in that area. Can be even Zoroastrianism, but it must be common and well respected.

The world looks like it is today not because people are stupid, or because like some say human nature is dark. That's not the case. It's been at least 50 years now when Cultural Marxism has started to seriously deploying their "march thru institutions". People in the US tend to know very little about it (there's not even one covers-it-all book on the topic in English), yet that one phenomena is almost solely responsible for the shape of our reality today. Not even the progress in science, nor politics, or the people wanting to live in a different, better way. All of that has been generated by a bunch of (I must say very intelligent) psychopaths who have found out how to level up psychological warfare with their methods coming down to (mostly) execution of the tactics of Critical Theory by Marcuse. They have found out how to modify human culture in a way that the society is going to start dividing itself into two tiers: commoners, and their masters. Sounds like a conspiracy theory, right? Unfortunately it isn't. That whole process is extremely well documented and everyone having enough motivation has a chance to achieve a proper level of understanding regarding what's been going on.

The cornerstone of Cultural Marxism as a model of managing societies is parasitism in every possible form. The masters feasting on the vital energy of commoners. Looking at the problem of Surveillance Capitalism thru that scope it becomes clear that its rise is the most natural thing in the world. It's going to be much worse than just selling data. Complete slavery for commoners is the end game and that is going to be achieved thru technology. Look at China and study outcomes of what's been going on there. They're just a test sandbox for what's planned for the rest of commoners.

Want to change / get rid of Surveillance Capitalism? Change back human culture in a way that people can either AGAIN care about the consequences of their actions or at least empower and trust their leaders who are going to do the only thing that can be done here to definitely solve the problem - kill the parasite. There's only one way for this civilization to win - it's thru a model in which everyone is going to take full responsibility for himself and his actions. How good are we with that you can easily answer yourself...

PS: I'm from Europe, so it's easier for us here to connect the dots thru reading sources in: German, French, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, Russian. Plus we can observe what the EU does on daily basis. Is it enough to mention that I've seen myself a portrait of Carl Marx on a corridor of the EU headquarters? It should be.

Whether you believe me or not is up to you. But one thing is sure even for a common Joe. There's something not OK with the world as it is today. I encourage you to find out for yourself.