Digital Colonialism: Implications of Surveillance Capitalism and Decolonial Practices

Abstract

In the current context, we are experiencing rapid technological changes, people's lives are attached to digital media and, in the meantime, a bombardment of information is transmitted, while many other data are collected. Multidisciplinarity brings the importance of aspects of focusing on both human psychology and historical facts that occurred in the formation of Latin America and colonial capitalism. This disposition is in line with the term data coloniality and/or digital colonialism, contemporarily establishing a new pattern of post-modern world power, with broad interaction of the virtual phenomenon in people's lives. One of the central aspects of this social pattern is the capacity of technologies to pass on content to the point of seducing the will of the world's population, leading to a capitalism of seduction. Traces of coloniality are present in the current pattern of hegemonic power, and in this technological existence, traffic can contain injustices, typically Eurocentric, discriminatory and unequal views. In the following text, the main objective is to address necessary theoretical contexts and bring the implications of digital coloniality driven by the capitalism of seduction. Therefore, this article will show how essential the facts that occurred in the social heritage are, but it shows that it is even more necessary to understand that the same thoughts and behaviors of the colonial period are still present in people's lives, which implies decolonial practices.