"For years, we've been hearing about the ills of surveillance capitalism--the business of extracting, collecting, and selling vast reams of user data that exploded with the rise of tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon. But what if everything we've been hearing is wrong? What if surveillance capitalism is not a rogue capitalism or a wrong turn taken by some misguided corporations? What if the system is working exactly as intended--and the only hope of restoring an open web is to take the fight directly to the system itself? How to Destroy Capitalism was first published online by OneZero, Medium's official tech publication, and it was an instant hit. In this timely and crucial work, Cory Doctorow argues that if we want to end surveillance capitalism, we have to end the monopolies behind the commercial web as we know it. Only by breaking apart the tech giants that control our online experiences can we hope to return to an open and free web--one where predatory data-harvesting is not a founding principle. 'Decades of fighting for digital rights has only left me more worried about the ways in which our networked technologies are being turned to the projects of surveillance and control,' Doctorow says. 'The banal evil of monopolistic tech is horrifying, but we shouldn't give the ordinary mediocrities running Big Tech undue credit. They aren't super-geniuses who've invented an unstoppable high-tech juggernaut. They're just modern robber barons whose dominance depends largely on our belief that they can never be dethroned." -- From back cover.