Data colonialism has a distinctive geography. Like historical colonialism, data colonialism is global in its ambitions, but unlike it, it penetrates the life conditions of individuals across all societies, wherever they are, that are being reshaped around digital infrastructures of connection. Data colonialism’s expansion is therefore both external (geographical) and internal (social). Given that the drive to appropriate data is fueling China as much as, if not more than, it is the West, it makes no sense to read data colonialism as exclusively a Western project.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 100