Published on: 01st January 2026
Authored By: Harsh Vardhan Singh
School of Law, JECRC University, Jaipur.
INTRODUCTION
When we think of sovereignty, we still picture borders, flags and courts. Yet, in 2025 the most consequential lines of power are often invisible: they run between datacentres, across corporate terms of service, and inside opaque ranking algorithms. Digital colonialism describes the systemic capture of information, attention and economic value by a handful of global technology firms whose reach routinely outstrips the legal and practical powers of many states. The term, usefully developed in contemporary scholarship, captures more than a metaphor: it reveals a material process by which data is extracted, governed and monetised in ways that reproduce deep global inequalities.[1]
This article argues that the extraterritorial operations of major platforms and cloud providers create new, structural limits on territorial sovereignty. Part I defines the phenomenon and maps its mechanisms. Part II analyses specific ways sovereignty is affected — regulatory, economic, security and cultural — with illustrative case law and policy examples. Part III identifies why existing legal frameworks struggle to respond, and Part IV proposes a pragmatic, legally grounded set of remedies that states and multilateral institutions should pursue.
DEFINING DIGITAL COLONIALISM: THE MODEL AND ITS MECHANICS
- From resource extraction to data extraction
Classical colonialism depended on physical extraction: land, minerals, labour. Digital colonialism substitutes a different commodity: behavioural and social data. Firms design opt-in and ambient services to convert everyday human activity into datasets that power advertising systems, predictive models and new revenue streams. This extraction is systemic and cumulative: small user actions aggregated across millions of profiles become an enormously valuable asset class — one that is controlled, processed and monetised far away from the individuals and states that generated the raw material. [2]
The five core mechanisms
- Infrastructure control. Tech giants and cloud providers own or mediate critical digital layers — app stores, identity providers, cloud hosting and content delivery networks — creating chokepoints that shape market entry and the cost of digital sovereignty.
- Data flows and storage topology. Because data is routed through international pipelines and stored in foreign jurisdictions, legal protections anchored to territory are frequently bypassed or rendered difficult to enforce.
- Algorithmic governance. Private ranking and moderation systems decide visibility, reputation and civic voice; they operate on corporate policy rather than democratic mandate.
- Contractual private ordering. End-user licences, developer agreements and platform rules form a parallel, often binding, governance architecture that can pre-empt or frustrate local law.
- Surveillance externalities. Data residing or processed in certain jurisdictions can be accessed under foreign surveillance laws, creating security and human-rights externalities for other states.
These mechanisms combine to create a structural power imbalance between corporate actors and many states — particularly lower-resource jurisdictions — that looks strikingly similar in effect to older forms of external control.
HOW SOVEREIGNTY IS AFFECTED: PRACTICAL MANIFESTATIONS
- Regulatory displacement and arbitrage
States rely on jurisdictional reach to regulate commerce, privacy and speech; platforms operate across jurisdictions. The result is regulatory displacement: companies optimise operations to jurisdictions whose rules permit their business models, while states face either capitulation (allowing operations under foreign rules) or painful trade-offs (blocking ubiquitous services). This dynamic creates regulatory arbitrage that privileges platform preferences over local public policy goals. The EU’s regulatory responses, for example, show the possibility of pushback — but also the limits of unilateral action when services are globally distributed. [3]
- Data sovereignty and surveillance risk
When citizens’ personal or sensitive data is stored or processed abroad, their home states lose meaningful control over access to that information. The CJEU’s Schrems II decision (2020) starkly illustrated this tension: the Court invalidated the EU–US Privacy Shield on grounds that U.S. surveillance law did not provide adequate protection for EU personal data once it crossed the Atlantic. Schrems II shows how differing domestic surveillance regimes and cross-border flows can undermine a state’s capacity to protect its population’s informational autonomy.[4]
- Economic dependency and the capture of value
Digital colonialism has a clear economic logic: platforms harvest local data, build centralised analytics and monetise insights globally — while much of the earned value accrues at corporate headquarters. Emerging economies often become suppliers of data and demanders of foreign digital services, hampering the growth of domestic digital industries and retaining a dependent relationship similar to historical trade imbalances. This effect is visible in the increasing policy debates across Africa, Latin America and Asia about local content, data sovereignty and fairer digital terms. [5]
- Political and cultural implications
Algorithmic moderation and ranking influence the distribution of political voice. When platforms remove, demote or amplify content according to corporate standards — not local law or democratic debate — public discourse is shaped by private policy choices. This raises questions of legitimacy and democratic accountability that conventional public-law remedies are slow to address.
WHY EXISTING LEGAL TOOLS STRUGGLE
- Territorial law vs transnational systems
National courts and regulators are designed to act within borders; data and code are not. Mutual legal assistance treaties (MLATs), cross-border enforcement mechanisms and ad hoc international cooperation remain slow and insufficient for the velocity of contemporary data flows.
- Private ordering and technological asymmetry
Platform terms of service and API gating give private actors a suite of tools that operate independently of public law. Combined with the substantial technical advantage of large platforms (infrastructure, data, engineers), states — and particularly low-capacity regulators — face a steep uphill struggle to audit or constrain corporate behaviour.
- Patchwork governance
The international response is fragmented. The GDPR and the EU’s AI regulatory initiative demonstrate regional leadership in asserting rules about data and algorithmic systems, while other jurisdictions — including India through its Digital Personal Data Protection legislation (2023) — pursue domestic pathways tailored to national priorities. Fragmentation helps protect local values, but also creates compliance complexity and frictions for transnational data flows.[6]
PATHWAYS FOR LEGAL AND POLICY RESPONSE
No single measure will fully overturn the power asymmetry that digital colonialism creates. A combined approach — legal, technical and institutional — is needed.
- Strengthening domestic regulatory capacity
Passing rights-based data protection laws is necessary but not sufficient. States must invest in enforcement capacity — forensic auditing, independent regulators with technical teams, and public transparency mandates — to make laws operational. India’s DPDP Act provides an example of domestic law that reasserts national control over data processing and cross-border transfers, but effective enforcement will determine whether such laws change power dynamics in practice. [7]
- Data localisation and selective sovereignty measures
While controversial and costly, data localisation coupled with standards-based compliance can be a lever: it reduces automatic foreign access and forces platforms to negotiate locally. Localization should be targeted and paired with interoperability rules to avoid technological isolationism.
- Invest in public digital infrastructure and interoperability
Public Digital Infrastructure (PDIs) — government-run identity systems, payment rails, open APIs and sovereign cloud options — can provide alternatives to platform monopolies, lower dependence, and enable domestic innovation. Interoperability rules and mandated portability (where feasible) can also reduce vendor lock-in and create competitive space for local firms.
- Multilateral cooperation and new norms
Digital colonialism is transnational; it requires transnational responses. Countries should cooperate to define baseline limits on foreign surveillance access, build common standards for algorithmic transparency, and negotiate treaty frameworks for cross-border transfers that respect fundamental rights. European regulatory experiments (GDPR and the AI Act) are important reference points for such harmonisation. [8]
- Community governance and data trusts
Community-centric models — data trusts, cooperatives and fiduciary regimes — offer practical ways to shift control back to data subjects and communities. These models must be supported by legal recognition and technical standards that make collective governance meaningful and enforceable.
CONCLUSION
Digital colonialism reframes a fundamental democratic question: who governs the informational environment that structures public life? When private code and corporate business models determine visibility, market access and civic voice, formal sovereignty is hollowed out in practice even if borders remain intact.
The response should be neither naively protectionist nor technologically fatalistic. Sovereignty in the 21st century will be partly juridical, partly infrastructural and partly normative. States can — and must — reassert control through rights-centred law, stronger enforcement, public infrastructure and international cooperation. At the same time, civil society, academics and the private sector must help build norms that ensure technology serves public values. If the 19th century’s contest was over land, the 21st century’s contest is over data and digital systems. The choices made now will determine whether the coming digital order is an instrument of domination or a platform for shared prosperity.
[1] Nick Couldry and Ulises A Mejias, The Costs of Connection: How Data Is Colonizing Human Life and Appropriating It for Capitalism (Stanford University Press 2019) 24–31.
[2] ibid 33.
[3] European Commission, ‘Regulation (EU) 2016/679, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)’ OJ L119/1 (2016).
[4] Data Protection Commissioner v Facebook Ireland Ltd and Maximillian Schrems (Schrems II) (Case C-311/18) [2020] ECLI:EU:C:2020:559 (CJEU).
[5] Michael Kwet, ‘Digital Colonialism: US Empire and the New Imperialism in the Global South’ (2019) 60(1) Race & Class 40–57.
[6] EUR-Lex, ‘Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council Laying Down Harmonised Rules on Artificial Intelligence (AI Act)’ COM/2021/206 final.
[7] Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (Government of India).
[8] Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (Government of India).
