ABSTRACT
This chapter goes into the material-economic aspects of the commodification of privacy that gain particular relevance in the current stage of capitalist development. The World Economic Forum's proposals describe influential tendencies to commodify privacy in current informational capitalist societies, which are the object of research. The chapter focuses on commodification processes that concern informational privacy in the context of the Internet. As a first step, it explores social media users' attitudes towards advertising on social media in general and then, as a second step, it explores whether they think that advertising is a problematic form of surveillance or an invasion of privacy. The approach presented in the chapter holds that privacy crises are related to two major interdependent problems that come along with the commodification of personal data. The processes of surveillance, exploitation, and alienation trigger empirically comprehensible privacy crises.
