Working under the influence of the European ideology of possessive individualism, Hegel calls this space of freedom a "property," a property that is inalienable and nontradable. But we can challenge data colonialism in a way that does not depend on possessive individualism by reformulating Hegel and defending the minimal space without whose boundedness the self would not be a distinct self at all. This is the space from which the self listens out and experiences the world. We fear the moment when that space is ruptured; George Orwell's novel 1984 provides the most famous example of this in literature. Hegel himself discusses slavery as an external capture of this space and insists on "the slave's absolute right to free himself." Continuous surveillance of the self from the outside is not as absolute and violent as slavery—it does not amount to the direct transfer of all control of the self's space of freedom—but it unquestionably violates that space.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 508