But in many other cases a relation has to be constituted in such a way that it enables data to flow in the first place. Once constituted, the seeming naturalness of the relation frames the resulting data as something that can be validly extracted from the flow of life. Without the act of extraction there would be no identifiable item of data and thus no separate right to extract that data. It is the stability of data relations that enables data extraction to seem both valid and beyond challenge. This is another consequence of the basic point already noted, that data is not natural but a resource whose extractive possibilities must themselves be socially constructed, just as physical nature had to be reconfigured so that it could be exploited by capital.

Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, loc. 133