There are many additional layers of colonial-style ownership. One is domination over production of the “tethered” devices through which human beings connect to the infrastructures of data collection (by “tethered,” we mean a device whose use ties users to reliance on a particular operating system or set of proprietary products: think of Apple but also of the use restrictions built into most portable devices). Another is power over the computing capacity that enables large-scale processing and storage of data, usually known as the cloud, a mystificatory term. (Amazon by the end of 2017 already had 51.8 percent of global market share, rivaled only by Microsoft with 13.3 percent, the Chinese Alibaba with 4.6 percent, and Google with 3.3 percent.)

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 92