The order of data colonialism damages the minimal integrity of the self as a space of self-relation. Yet human beings' possibility of being "at home" with themselves depends on having access to that space of the self. The damage done by data colonialism is therefore ecological in its nature and not just in its scale. Recall the ancient Greek roots of the word ecology: the task of gathering together a home (legein + oikos). The social order of data colonialism is, in a precise sense, an antiecology that disrupts the basic space of human autonomy and conviviality in a process that might be compared to what biologists call "dysbiosis." This is the opposite of the successful forms of interdependency between life forms that we call "symbiosis." Data colonialism disrupts the ecology of human life not for some higher purpose but in the name of pure instrumentality: to support capitalism's drive to profit.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 606