Mejias, Ulises, A. & Couldry, Nick (2024). Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech (and How to Fight Back). WH Allen

Abstract

This review highlights Data Grab: The New Colonialism of Big Tech (and How to Fight Back) as an exceptional theoretical intervention that enables a radical rethinking of the digital present. Rather than offering a mere analysis of technologies or the digital economy, the author values its content as a revealing epistemological effort that unlocks new categories of understanding. The extraction of data is thus exposed not as a distortion of progress, but as the continuation of a deeply rooted colonial logic. The review underscores the analytical strength of the concept of “data colonialism”, not as a critical metaphor, but as an analytical category that sheds light on contemporary processes of appropriation, exploitation, and control. The work is praised for its ability to articulate a structural critique alongside emancipatory proposals, distancing itself from moralistic or technocentric perspectives. Furthermore, the review stresses the importance of a reading that goes beyond ethical or regulatory concerns, addressing instead the epistemic and political dimensions of the digital regime. Data Grab is interpreted as an urgent call for the decolonisation of our digital lives— a work that not only interprets the world, but compels us to transform it through a radical political imagination.