Every aspect of data colonialism can be understood in terms of its contribution to a fundamental principle of capitalism: the drive to maximize control of the inputs to its production process. This requires a reasonably ordered state of the social world that makes markets possible and functional. In all societies characterized by increasingly overwhelming information flows, the premium on society's legibility, even its basic countability, grows. In capitalist societies that are not democracies, such as China, capitalism's desire for the control of production inputs works hand in hand with government's unrestrained desire to control all inputs to the social order.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 106