To reiterate, data colonialism is what happens when life becomes the input of capitalism and becomes organized through data relations. As part of this process, data colonialism comes to depend on an emerging transformation of social relations both within the formal economy and outside of it. Urgent calls for us to submit to this new order are portrayed as inevitable, when in fact they are not.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 213