The problem of inconvenience drives the temptation toward partial solutions—for example, the idea that we just need better networks, perhaps networks with an element of public purpose or, indeed, that we should follow big tech’s own proposals for how to use their products in ways that enhance “digital wellness.” “Better” data-driven networks will not save us, however. For by attempting to reform a particular network within a wider system of platforms, we are not challenging the foundations of the system but merely finding alternative ways to replicate it. There is a danger here of repeating the error of those early nineteenth-century political economists, mocked by Polanyi for their “mystical readiness to accept the social consequences of economic improvement, whatever they might be.”

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 586