The European legislation on privacy (the GDPR) represents a serious practical challenge to the details of data colonialism's existing business models. As a result, parts of those models may get reconfigured and rerouted, and the principle of obtaining consent for personal data use is at least now being embedded as a norm of daily practice, even if opportunities to refuse consent to powerful platforms of convenience often remain highly constrained. But even a broken-up and redistributed order of data power is still an order. The problem, as always, is bigger: how to live differently, knowing what we know and having seen the offer of a datafied order, with its benefits and costs.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 591