Data extraction needs to feel natural and normal, not like theft, to stabilize

Evidence

Indeed, Zuboff plausibly argues that much data extraction today is not a contract or relation at all, in that data just seems to get extracted at a distance. But the wider set of arrangements on which data colonialism relies would be ineffective unless they operated as something like a social form that seems both natural and normal, quite unlike an arbitrary act of theft or extraction. It is this social form we call data relations; data relations enable the basic processes of social construction on which the stabilization of data colonialism depends for the long term. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 134

Categorization

• XREF: Contrasts with Zuboff’s surveillance-capitalism account in the rival literature; a key point of divergence for the reader mapping the two schools. — connects to: Media literacy normalizes data extraction rather than resisting it and fails in practice. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 590; Data relations are the social form that makes data extraction seem natural and normal — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 132; Paying users for their data would legitimate rather than fix behavioral extraction — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 299 (+2 more)
• QUESTION: Does the naturalization claim actually distinguish data colonialism from Zuboff, or is it a restatement of her ‘radical indifference’ thesis?

Broader Connections

• Corporate rationality masks everyday data extraction as routine business rather than appropriation #corroborates (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 101
• Paying users for their data would legitimate rather than fix behavioral extraction #complicates (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 299