Data extraction infrastructures deform the self that autonomy and freedom depend on

Evidence

But the outcome is hardly something to celebrate. For the unwelcome truth is that, just as in Marx’s eyes capitalism had disrupted human beings’ relations with physical nature, in the era of data colonialism, capitalism risks disturbing humanity’s relations to its nature—that is, our lives as reflexive, relatively autonomous human beings. Data colonialism interposes infrastructures of data extraction directly into the texture of human life and so risks deforming human experience in a fundamental way, invading the space of the self on which the values of autonomy and freedom in all their forms depend. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 148

It is this transformation that is the larger context for the datafication of labor relations that many critics have noted. It is this transformation also that links the appropriations of data colonialism to contemporary capitalism’s latest lines of expansion. But the outcome is hardly something to celebrate. For the unwelcome truth is that, just as in Marx’s eyes capitalism had disrupted human beings’ relations with physical nature, in the era of data colonialism, capitalism risks disturbing humanity’s relations to its nature—that is, our lives as reflexive, relatively autonomous human beings. Data colonialism interposes infrastructures of data extraction directly into the texture of human life and so risks deforming human experience in a fundamental way, invading the space of the self on which the values of autonomy and freedom in all their forms depend. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 148

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the attention/surveillance school the reader is comparing against — both claim a threat to autonomy, but this frames the harm as invasion of the self via data extraction rather than via attentional capture. — connects to: Manufactured objects encode impersonal directives that strip users of individuality — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 504; Data appropriation threatens the minimal space of the self — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 75; Sharing’s semantic unboundedness masks the corporate capture of data — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 514 (+15 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 148

Broader Connections

• Surveillance capitalism exploits both extraction and our voluntary surrender via interfaces #expands (0.90) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 734
• Privately controlled data extraction produces social classifications that entrench inequality #expands (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 443