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some ways to the GDPR, allowing internet users to request the data that has
been collected on them (and learn where it was sold), to request that it be
deleted, and to opt out of future collection. Facebook, Google, and many others
revamped their privacy pages, allowing users to toggle what the companies
could and could not collect, and what they could and could not do with what
they collected. The law applies to data brokers too, but you have to contact each
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and demands that they delete your info.
In the absence of a national policy, other states are building their own
legislation. A consumer privacy bill is pending in the Florida House and Senate.
And the Washington Privacy Act requires companies to promise not to re-
identify data, mandating “clear, understandable, and transparent”
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Gillibrand has proposed a Data Protection Act that would create an
independent federal agency to oversee data privacy and security.
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these acts, including loopholes (companies may reject user requests for data, for
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allow companies to sell your data, as the CCPA allows Californians to do, that
bidding is happening without the bidders knowing as much about you—and
therefore, the ad is less valuable. But Google seems to have found a way to turn
this to its advantage: When a user ops out, Google does not allow other parties
to bid at all, restricting it to its own, in-house bidders.
And these laws are new enough that it’s unclear how, to what extent, and how
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consequences, points out Ashutosh Bhagwat, a constitutional law professor at
the University of California–Davis. Any policy that undermines the basic
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unless we intend to live without social media altogether. (Not likely.) And
paying for services rather than relying on advertising can accentuate the “digital
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