The representatives of data colonialism try to convince us that there is nothing hollow in our assent to their order, that we are choosing familiar values of connection and human solidarity when we choose this datafied social order. They tell us that we need to go on connecting with and through them. But that is a ruse. The ruse depends on inducing human beings to forget ways of living that were left behind when we came to spend so much time servicing the social quantification sector.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 649