"THIS IS WHAT MODERN COLONIALISM LOOKS LIKE." So tweeted Christopher Wylie, the whistle-blower who kicked off the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica scandal in March 2018.1 Wylie was referring to Cambridge Analytica's plans to expand its operations in India for using social media targeting to influence the political process there. But the scale and scope of data colonialism is much wider than the malfeasance of a few overweening data marketers and their in-house psychologists. It extends much wider even than Facebook's normal practices of data extraction and data licensing that the scandal opened to view.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 60