We should not forget, however, that the law was a site of extensive conflict over how industrial capitalism’s early excesses could be corrected (this conflict occurred as part of the double movement that Polanyi analyzed, discussed in chapter 4). And there is no doubt that geopolitical battles over competing regimes of privacy and regulation of data flow—for example, between the European Union, the United States, and China—could be a major factor in how data colonialism develops on a global scale over the next decade.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 557