MDPMI: Surveillance Capitalism Must be Confronted

CODE_Submission_7Apr2025.pdf

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The Campaign On Digital Ethics (CODE) made a formal submission to the Competition Commission’s Media and Digital Platform Market Inquiry (MDPMI), calling on the Commission to name and challenge the central mechanism underpinning platform monopolies: surveillance capitalism. 

While CODE welcomes the Commission’s recognition of the harm inflicted on South Africa’s news media sector, it cautions that the Inquiry risks treating the symptoms of digital market failure without confronting the underlying business model that enables it. 

CODE argues that surveillance capitalism - the large scale extraction, commodification, and monetisation of user and publisher data - is not an incidental byproduct of digital innovation, but the foundation on which platforms like Google, Meta and YouTube have built their market power. 

This extractive model enables platforms to: 

• Capture value from news content without compensation 

• Hoard user data for behavioural profiling and targeted advertising

• Use scraped content to train generative AI models without consent

The result is a self-reinforcing cycle where data accumulation leads to market dominance, and market dominance leads to more data. While the Provisional Report of the MDPMI acknowledges aspects of this dynamic, CODE stresses that failing to explicitly frame it as surveillance capitalism weakens the ability of regulators to craft effective, structural remedies. 

Additionally, CODE raised concerns about the Inquiry’s recommendation that platforms be required to share user data with news publishers. While intended to correct imbalances in the digital advertising ecosystem, such a move could inadvertently entrench surveillance-based models rather than dismantle them.

Three risks are highlighted:

1. Transferring personal data to third parties, even under the guise of transparency or economic fairness, will violate the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA).

2. If newsrooms adopt data-driven targeting practices, they risk being perceived as complicit in the same unethical practices that they seek to expose. This could further erode public confidence in journalism’s role as a democratic watchdog.

3. Larger, well-resourced publishers are more likely to benefit from data-sharing schemes, while smaller, community, and vernacular media may be left behind, further deepening market concentration.

Rather than extend surveillance capabilities to new actors, CODE proposes a rights-based, forward-looking alternative: a public data trust, administered and controlled by the Information Regulator and designed to uphold the principles of privacy, equity, and public interest.

This framework would:

• Require platforms to cease unauthorised scraping of user data, and ensure informed consent in all data practices.

• Enable the development of anonymised, aggregated datasets that support public interest media without compromising user rights.

• Prioritise equitable access to data insights, especially for smaller publishers.

• Enforce regular audits of platform data practices and algorithmic transparency, with penalties for non-compliance.

CODE commends the Inquiry for its commitment to investigating digital market failures. However, only addressing surface-level imbalances, such as compensation gaps or bargaining asymmetries, while necessary, will prove insufficient if the root system enabling them is left intact.

“As regulators, policymakers, the media, and civil society, we have a shared responsibility to ensure that the digital economy aligns with constitutional values and not just commercial imperatives,” said Kavisha Pillay, Executive Director of CODE. “This means resisting the normalisation of unethical data practices, and creating frameworks that uphold human dignity, agency, and accountability.”

The Inquiry’s final report will present a unique opportunity to move beyond piecemeal reform and to begin laying the foundation for a fairer digital future. 

CODE stands ready to support that effort.

To view our joint submission with SANEF + eight others, click here.