A quote I highlighted a few years ago in Yuval Harari's Homo Deus that just came back up in my Readwise:

"In the heyday of European imperialism, conquistadors and merchants bought entire islands and countries in exchange for coloured beads. In the twenty-first century our personal data is probably the most valuable resource most humans still have to offer, and we are giving it to the tech giants in exchange for email services and funny cat videos."