Data colonialism’s deepest danger is that it succeeds so well we stop wanting freedom

Evidence

The greatest threat that data colonialism poses is that, in time, it works too well for us to want to live any other kind of existence, so that our complicity in losing hold on the possibility of freedom becomes complete. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 649

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that oppression’s worst outcome is comfortable complicity rather than resistance inverts the usual ‘surveillance as enforcement’ frame — closer to Zamyatin’s ‘We’ than to dystopias of force.
• XREF: Resonates with the ‘data colonialism as rival frame’ reading purpose — the harm is not extraction but the foreclosure of alternatives, which reframes the whole attention/surveillance debate. — connects to: Data colonialism requires transforming society itself, not just extracting value — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 365

Broader Connections

• Data colonialism requires transforming society itself, not just extracting value #expands (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 365