The social quantification sector is fast building its own social knowledge. That knowledge is commercially controlled, generally opaque in its production, not open to public debate, and thoroughly oriented first to capitalist drives before it is oriented to the interests of government. It shapes everyday actions quite differently than did earlier forms of social knowledge. The result, as we already hinted in chapter 1, is a different type of social order in which the agency and control of corporations is enhanced and that of individual citizens is reduced and sometimes even erased.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 368