Regulation like the GDPR reshapes but does not dissolve data-colonial power.

Evidence

The European legislation on privacy (the GDPR) represents a serious practical challenge to the details of data colonialism’s existing business models. As a result, parts of those models may get reconfigured and rerouted, and the principle of obtaining consent for personal data use is at least now being embedded as a norm of daily practice, even if opportunities to refuse consent to powerful platforms of convenience often remain highly constrained. But even a broken-up and redistributed order of data power is still an order. The problem, as always, is bigger: how to live differently, knowing what we know and having seen the offer of a datafied order, with its benefits and costs. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 591

Categorization

• XREF: Maps the data-colonialism school’s ambivalent take on regulation against the surveillance-school emphasis on state reform. — connects to: Resisting data colonialism requires an ecology-of-life frame, not legal regulation — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 567; Data colonialism’s continuity is functional, not literal, with historical colonialism. — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 46; Data colonialism is jointly driven by corporate and state power — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is…, 162 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Resisting data colonialism requires an ecology-of-life frame, not legal regulation #qualifies (0.85) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 567
• Data colonialism’s continuity is functional, not literal, with historical colonialism. #corroborates (0.80) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 46
• Data colonialism is jointly driven by corporate and state power #expands (0.75) — Nick Couldry & Ulises A. Mejias, The Costs of Connection, 162
• Facebook exited the EU legal framework for 1.5 billion users to evade GDPR #exemplifies (0.75) — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1556