Recall for a moment some of the actions whose partial nature we criticized earlier: media literacy campaigns, withdrawal from this or that platform, and legislation requiring data companies to actually obtain something like consent for using personal data. What if we approached them not merely as individualistic acts or as technical fixes but as part of a collaborative attempt to build a different social world than the one data colonialism promises us? Acquiring media literacy might then include citizens learning to help one another become less reliant on systems whose negative effects we all know. Withdrawing from a particular platform might involve learning with others how to distinguish between forms of forced coordination that benefit platforms and forms of collaboration that genuinely benefit people and then, on the basis of that understanding, building new communicative forms that prioritize the latter over the former. Legislating for a better data environment might involve going beyond attempts to “tame” data companies and affirming positive principles on the basis of which future social uses of data could be organized for collective benefit and not corporate privilege.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 634