We will certainly not be claiming that all forms of damage to the space of human autonomy are the same. There is a world of difference between slavery's direct and violent ownership of bodies and minds and the more indirect forms of surveillance and dataveillance that characterize contemporary data relations. Still, they have something crucial in common. We seek to identify what that is, building on excellent work done by many authors in sociology, communications, and legal theory, including Mark Andrejevic, Julie Cohen, Oscar Gandy, Karen Levy, and David Lyon.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 486