But contemporary data relations involve more than just relations; they involve systems that insinuate themselves within “the self’s needs, desires and other choices.” This is what Hegel in his discussion of free will called the problem of arbitrariness. The data infrastructure on which the self-tracker relies to augment herself contains elements and dynamics that are troubling because they are arbitrary, driven by goals that are not hers, and operate in ways that remain largely opaque and so can never be reflexively integrated into her goals.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 521