Whether immediately commodifiable or not, the data extracted has potential value in a wider space of equivalence in which the individual's distinctive properties as a data source can be ignored (this abstractness is exactly how Marx understood commodification to operate). The commodification of exchangeable data is the end goal of data relations and is, as Matthew Crain notes, "the root of [their] power imbalances."

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 139