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< | Data Colonialism: How Powerful Nations Control the Digital Lives of the Global South | >
> | *Mark Zuckerberg has done more harm to the human race than anyone his age. * | | | | |
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< | In the 19th century, colonial powers sought natural resources; however, in the 21st century, they seek data. Nowadays, major economies and big tech companies control digital infrastructure and global data flows, often at the expense of developing countries in Global South. Companies like Google, Huawei, Microsoft, and Amazon collect massive user data to expand their economic while controlling key internet infrastructure. As developing nations rely more on these external digital platforms, they face risks of privacy violations, limiting their technological sovereignty. This paper examines how data extraction, weak regulations and imbalance of power lead to data colonialism. It argues that developing nations should increase local people’s awareness, enforce data localization, and strengthen legal protections to lessen reliance on foreign platforms. | >
> | Mark Zuckerberg controls the human race to a certain degree. He knows what we think, how we feel and what we like. Every click on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp? feeds into the endless sea of data he has already collected from us. Every day, his "gift" of convenience lures us into giving him more information about ourselves. As he continues to collect our data, he continues to learn about our pasts, presents, and futures. He continuously strengthens his understanding of how our thoughts and beliefs have evolved over time and how they will continue to evolve."But I miss my family, they are so far away". "I want to know what my friends are up to"." I want my friends to know what I am up to"." I want to FIT IN". So, we give more at the cheap cost of convenience, knowing who we are giving to, knowing who we are empowering. Yesterday, I texted my mom on WhatsApp? and told her about my day. I also scrolled through Instagram reels - I skipped the "top 5 best burgers in New York videos"; on my feed but spent a few minutes watching comedies about Trump. Then I replied to my friend's post of him at the beach: "Lucky you, wish I was there too". Zuckerberg knows. He knows that I speak regularly to my mom, that I prefer laughing at Trump rather than finding burger places. He also knows that I like the beach. But that's only the surface, Zuckerberg knows more about me than I know about me. Zuckerberg controls the human race because he intimately knows (almost) every individual's individuality. Zuckerberg is powerful because he can read minds. Zuckerberg is powerful because he is all-knowing. | | | | |
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> | Such power has harmed the human race by stripping it of its very humanity. What makes our human race human is its composition of individuals, who regardless of being physically controlled, have always found refuge in their own minds. No man, even the most powerful rulers could have full access to the continuous flow of someone’s thoughts. Gandhi was aware of this truth when he stated, "You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind". He knew, that despite being physically controlled, he could NEVER be stripped of his exclusive access to his self. Several have tried to strip people of their humanity in the past - they have indoctrinated people from the youngest age, censored speech, and used propaganda. While such measures have influenced how people think, shaping their convictions and beliefs, they have been limited in effect. They have failed to capture the complexity of every individual that was targeted - still even the most powerful could not have access to people's deepest secrets, their insecurities, their ambitions, or their subconscious. Hence, despite the oppressors and power-hungry tyrants throughout history, the human race has continuously enriched itself with the birth of every individual: new ideas, new opinions, new perspectives, and new stories, all added to the human race's incorruptible humanity. | | | | |
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< | Under the past colonial, the colonialism refers to the control of physical land, labor and natural resources. Today, with the advancement of technology, a new form of colonial has been emerged, known as a “_data colonialism_”. According to Scholar Couldry and Mejias, data colonialism refers to a “combines the predatory extractive practices of historical colonialism with the abstract quantification methods of computing.” https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/89511/1/Couldry_Data-colonialism_Accepted.pdf. Under this concept, data represents as a new form of resource appropriation dominated by at least two poles of colonial powers: Western and Chinese tech giants. These two create communication networks with the sole aim of collecting data, profiting from it, and retaining it as raw material for data analytics https://globalsouthseries.in/2023/01/25/digital-colonialism-neo-colonialism-of-the-global-south. | >
> | But Zuck. Zuck has done what many vicious tyrants before him have failed to do, even with the most sophisticated torture methods. Users of his products (and later products that learned from his) can no longer seek refuge in their own minds. Their thoughts no longer belong exclusively to them but are appropriated by a superstructure (a.k.a ZUCK) that becomes perpetually more omniscient at the cheap cost of everybody's individualities. | | | | |
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> | Speaking of cheap, 3.82 dollars was how much the average Facebook user was worth to Zuckerberg in 2016 (Funk). Really? From individuals with rich, perpetually flowing thoughts, to commodities? Worth 3.82 dollars? That's what I am to you, Zuck? Maybe my true worth to you is the information I constantly provide. But still, I am just one of your billions of subjects. You don't actually care about me, you only care about my contribution to the aggregate, to the super machine you have built - the source of your power. So now, my supposedly unquantifiable individuality is simply disposable to you, it is just a millilitre of fuel to your machine of power. Even better, it increases your company's profits by 3.82 dollars a year! | | | | |
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< | Global South countries, including South Asia, Latin America, and Africa, use tech giant companies’ digital platforms, such as Google cloud storage, Amazon internet, or Huawei AI, to store their data. However, because their data resides on external servers, these Global South countries lack complete control over their own information. Meanwhile, the laws from big tech countries also raised legal concern over the privacy of this data. For example, the U.S. Cloud Act grants the authority to government to access electronic data held by US-based technology companies, even if such data is stored on server outside United States. https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/legal-notices/trust-center/us-cloud-act. Therefore, the data that is stored, collected, and used by Global South’s citizens will be used for the benefit of the powerful nations rather than their own, vulnerable to foreign surveillance and corporate appropriation. | >
> | Maybe this is all a means to an end. You are outweighing the harm you cause us with good right? You are making our life easier right? You are contributing to the "exoskeletal nervous system that ties the entire species together"(Moglen) right? No. All you care about is control. All you care about is power. All you care about is YOU. You knew you were, almost exclusively, appropriating something that WE were meant to control. You knew, from the beginning that you were creating a "dark machine by design" (Moglen) that would feed off our progress for your benefit. The harm you caused to the human race was not accidental. It was an evil manifestation of your greed and lust for power. Even today, you continue to strengthen your hegemony by acquiring, acquiring, and acquiring. You have left us very few avenues to truly escape your control of our minds. | | | | |
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> | So, did such harm go further than that of anyone Zuckerberg's age? Very few people, let alone those Zuck's age, could be said to have committed comparable harm to the human race. Steve Jobs, the king of the undead now dead, created the "densest collection of sensors ever assembled"; - the Spyphone. His creation also allowed him, and those who succeeded him, to intimately track our behaviour and tap into each individual's flow of thoughts. He did it at 51. Musk, who is currently trying to literally plant a chip in people's brains is also up there. But he started that project at 45. But Zuck. He created Facebook at 19. | | | | |
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< | One case of tech giant’s dominance is the supply of surveillance technologies from China to the Global South countries. For example, the Zimbabwean government installed facial recognition technology from Cloudwalk in public spaces to monitor activists https://adf-magazine.com/2023/01/zimbabwe-turns-to-chinese-technology-to-expand-surveillance-of-citizens/. This has been done with a lack of legislation regulating what happens to the collected data and with no clear safeguard for how to process it. Moreover, Zimbabwe also has a nationwide rollout of mobile phone telecommunications equipment from Huawei. While concerns around the security of this Huawei communication equipment have seen by the United States leading a call for banning usage, Zimbabwe was tied with this tech giant company without having adequate legal frameworks to justify this usage and ignoring the fact that in China itself, these technologies were used to steal data from the Uyghur community https://privacyinternational.org/long-read/4692/huawei-and-surveillance-zimbabwe. The mentioned cases reflect what happened in the past colonial times, where the profits and control remain in powerful hands, while the costs in terms of loss of autonomy and privacy are borne by the poorer nations.
The challenges faced by the Global South countries are not purely a failure of governance but also a result of the lack of awareness and imbalance of power in the structure of the global digital system. People in many developing countries lack knowledge about the collection or use of their data. As Couldry and Mejias said, the digital platforms usually become people’s everyday interaction without them realizing what they are giving up. At the same time, unlike European countries that have strong data privacy regulation like GDPR, countries in the Global South mostly lack such legal protection, making it easy for big tech companies to use these data for their own profit. Moreover, even where the law exists, the penalties are sometimes too weak to stop the violation by these tech giant companies. For example, Uber still operates even in breach of local law since the cost of penalties for running a business is lower than the benefit of operating it (e.g., in 2016, a French court fined Uber for running illegal services) https://www.csis.org/analysis/real-national-security-concerns-over-data-localization.
Global South countries need to take clear steps to reclaim their digital futures and fight back against data colonialism. One solution is to build strategic knowledge and culture for local people and to find new space for internet and digital governance. This new space should be supported by the United Nations rather than by the U.S. or other tech giants’ institutions in order to help developing countries create their own fair data laws and strategies to combat the data privacy violations done by powerful nations. One strategy that could be led by the United Nations is to emerge South-South cooperation as a tool for strengthening data statistic and capacities between Global South countries to develop common standards to stop further exploitation. Moreover, countries may adopt the regulation about 'localizing digitization,' which mandates the local storage of consumer data. While this might limit global data flows, it could be a beneficial step to give countries better control of their citizens’ data and build a fairer power balance. Alternatively, the ‘nationalizing data’ approach may be done by requiring tech companies to pay for data they collect. In this way, the data will be used not just for private profits but for the benefit of their public.
Today’s tech giants control data similarly to how colonial powers appropriated land and resources. The control over their data falls beyond reach for countries in the Global South. To reclaim digital sovereignty, developing countries must have stronger data legislation and educate their citizens, while keeping data within national borders and work together to create regulations that protect their digital rights. | | |
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