Algorithmic Opacity and Epistemic Sovereignty under Platform Capitalism

Abstract

The paper examines the complex relationship between algorithmic opacity and epistemic control in contemporary digital societies, with particular attention to the dynamics of Surveillance Capitalism. The analysis focuses on the tension between the computational efficiency of machine-learning–based artificial intelligence systems and the veil of opacity that often surrounds these technologies. Adopting a notion of opacity that also encompasses non-technical factors—such as source-code secrecy and digital illiteracy—the article investigates how opacity functions as a device of epistemic power. Finally, it stresses that, beyond the well-known risks to individual rights, the algorithmic black box poses systemic challenges to the categories of epistemic sovereignty and agency, both understood as essential to the development of healthy and authentic democratic processes.