With the declaration of the Covid-19 pandemic by the World Health Organization in March 2020, educational institutions worldwide abandoned physical school and universities spaces for the purpose of virus containment, transitioning to a different model of education known as "distance learning" or "Emergency Remote Teaching". In order to carry out educational activities, these institutions, both in Italy and beyond, turned to the so-called "proprietary platforms", which are infrastructure services owned by large companies in the digital market. This thesis carries out a careful analysis of the critical issues related to the possibility that the characteristics of "surveillance capitalism", brilliantly elucidated by the American academic and sociologist Shoshana Zuboff, may also engulf the realm of education, posing risks to academic freedom, scientific research, and the protection of personal data. The first chapter analyzes the birth and development of surveillance capitalism. The evolution of this new economic model begins with Google's discovery of the "behavioral surplus", which becomes a crucial raw material whose "extraction" plays a central role in the activities of digital-era operators. Through the insightful analysis of Zuboff, Pagano, Rikiap, Wu, Khan, and Florio, the chapter will demonstrate how surveillance capitalism has contributed to the emergence of intellectual monopolies and "data-driven intellectual monopoly", illustrating how even companies operating outside Silicon Valley have recognized the potential of the "behavioral surplus." The birth of the "data-driven economy" brings with it a series of issues, such as the commodification of individuals, user manipulation, often victimizing consumers through unfair commercial practices, as well as risks to individual self-determination, with serious consequences for democracy. Finally, as surveillance capitalism's activities raise numerous issues regarding the protection of personal data, we will reconstruct the framework for privacy protection, starting from the right to privacy and delving into key concepts of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In the second chapter, it will described how the oligopolistic and monopolistic operators of surveillance capitalism have extended their influence "outside of Silicon Valley" into the field of research and education. Firstly, the chapter will examine how major platforms and scientific publishers have gained a predominant role within university research by seizing control of infrastructure and overseeing the entire research workflow, resulting in a situation of lock-in for much of the research world. It will then discuss the phenomenon of "surveillance publishing" described by Jeff Pooley and the possibility that major publishers can invisibly and strategically influence key decisions in academia. By presenting empirical data, it will be suggested the presence of undue interference by surveillance capitalists in the activities of major publishers. This part will also analyze the phenomenon of Emergency Remote Teaching, "platform education", and "e-proctoring", highlighting how Italian educational institutions and most universities have relied on surveillance capitalists' platforms for distance education. In addition to the risks described in the first chapter, there are numerous issues related to the sharing of specific categories of student and minor data, with the potential development of student performance monitoring systems and of a global educational monoculture dictated by proprietary platforms. The thesis will also explore some alternatives, which were already available during the pandemic, such as the Italian open-source platform GARR and the French choice to implement a government portal for educational purposes. Furthermore, it will introduce two European-level measures: the European open-source infrastructure GAIA-X, not originally designed for educational purposes but potentially useful for education, and the European education space, which encompasses the digital education action plan for 2021-2027. The third chapter will conduct an examination of the problematic aspects of distance learning in relation to the GDPR. This will be followed by a partial analysis of some privacy policies of the most used platforms during the Emergency Remote Teaching experience. First, the analysis will cover the privacy policy formulated during the implementation of distance learning in March 2020, then they will be compared with current privacy policies. Many of the issues that will arise also relate to the phenomenon of e-proctoring, so we will analyze the decision of the Italian Data Protection Authority to sanction a well-known Milanese university for the use of such software, examining how the Italian Authority's observations have not always been shared by European counterparts. Since the phenomenon of distance learning has largely impacted children and minors, the thesis will propose a greater application of the "privacy by design" principle and the mandatory assessment of the impact on the protection of personal data when handling the personal data of minors. Finally, the chapter will look at a new challenge shared by the education sector and the GDPR: artificial intelligence, particularly the Chatbot ChatGPT, whose use in education is highly controversial. In the fourth chapter, it will be hypothesized the joint use of antitrust legislation and the GDPR to erode the monopolies and oligopolies that surveillance capitalists have built in digital markets through their data extraction activities. These two regulatory frameworks are considered suitable for protecting the vulnerable condition of student- users, understood as a combination of consumers and data subjects. The chapter will also examine the judicial and non-judicial developments that recognize the value of Big Data as market assets. Finally, it will be analyzed the European data strategy, especially the Digital Markets Act, a regulation aimed at reconciling antitrust and personal data protection. Subsequently, it will briefly introduce the Digital Services Act, the Data Governance Act, and the Data Act proposal. While none of these legislative acts specifically targets the education sector, the final chapter will consider their potential application in efforts to counter the practices of surveillance capitalism in the provision of distance education.