What is 'data colonialism'? In layman's terms, it means that
our personal information online is being exploited and used for
the benefit and purposes of big tech companies to enhance
their capital gains and control our time and usage.
So, how does it affect us?
The way we live our lives has become dependent on virtual and
online activity and even more so during the Covid-19 pandemic.
For instance, social media, inbuilt GPS, health apps,
insurance companies, online shopping, booking deliveries, taxi apps,
our Google searches and more, all of them require access
to our personal data. Your details, set to public or private,
are available for use by online companies.
Scientists Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias are convinced
that this appropriation of our data is colonial in nature.
Surveillance is being normalised and we are seeing the emergence of
a new social order. In their book, 'The Costs of Connection',
they discuss that: 'Instead of natural resources and labour, what is now
being appropriated is human life through its conversion into data.'
In other words, our online identities have become a commodity,
which companies can profit from.
Some critics, however, claim that the very term 'data colonialism' is not
appropriate. Because historically, colonialism is: 'Unthinkable without
violence, the takeover of lands and populations by sheer physical force.'
But Mejias and Couldry explain that despite context changing
parallels to historical colonialism are still explicit.
Think of the Spanish empire's Requerimiento,
or the 'demand document'.
It was made to inform the natives of the colonists' rights to conquest.
Conquistadors read this document out demanding the natives acceptance
of the new conditions in Spanish, which no local understood.
Now think of the terms of service we sign up to
every time we join a platform.
They are often unclear and long, which we rarely have time to read,
and so automatically click 'accept'. Unknowingly giving
consent to being tracked online.
Big tech companies, in turn, capitalise on this ignorance.
'Surveillance capitalists' genuinely believe that human experience is
'A free raw material for translation into behavioural data'.
Once Google announced that 'Data is more like sunlight than oil'
instead of a resource that is being appropriated from someone's territory.
Therefore, Google believes that human data is an owner-less
natural material that can be harvested sustainably
for the benefit of humanity.
Despite this blatant misuse of people's data,
one third of all countries don't safeguard their nationals' privacy.
This poorly regulated internet space creates
fertile ground for online industries.
Heralding their activities as a 'humanitarian mission', social media
companies obtain a green light to start uncontrolled data harvesting.
In 2013, Facebook launched an NGO called Internet.org. The NGO's
aim was to help disadvantaged people connect to online services.
Yet, the main channel for access lay through a site and app called
Facebook Free Basics. The app served as a portal to Facebook's version of
the internet and was launched in 60 countries – half of them in Africa.
This connection mission by Facebook was a double-edged sword.
Not only were vast amounts of people's data collected
without their knowledge, such data extraction undermined
developing countries potential to create their own digital economies.
Free Basics faced criticism from over 67 digital rights groups
all over the world. In an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg
they claimed that Internet.org violated the principles of
net neutrality and threatened security, privacy, and innovation.
In India, Facebook's 'civilisation' mission met a strong local opposition.
And after a year of highly-publicised conflict, Free Basics was banned.
In Africa, Facebook's expansion saw little resistance, only some
small NGO's were trying to petition Zuckerberg's initiative,
with not enough support. Since then, the situation
on the continent hasn't been improved much – 13 out of 54
African countries still have no laws or bills for data privacy.
Undeniably, ideologies such as 'connection', 'building communities',
and 'personalisation' keep incentivising corporations to collect more of our
personal data. But we are still at an early stage of data colonisation.
And the only way to prevent tech companies from colonising us,
is to question these ideologies and exercise critical thinking.
Individually, we can take more control over the information we
are sharing and think twice before agreeing to terms of service.
Countries can help their nationals to protect their personal information
by modernising laws and informing each user
about their 'right to be forgotten'.
Only then we will be closer to owning our own data.