I agree with the editors of the Washington Post that the U. S. needs an updated privacy law:
Individual rights to control, access and delete data seem to be a given in any forthcoming law, as are some form of limits on collection and processing. Those limits are perhaps the most important part of the package. Congress must ask companies to look out for their consumers rather than continuing to ask consumers to look out for themselves, ideally by imposing duties of loyalty and care based on reasonable expectations. What’s required of a business should be proportionate to the size of the business and the scope of its data collection. These matters and more may be devilish in their details, but broadly lawmakers seem primed to concur.
I’ve already expressed myself on this subject numerous times. I think that federal privacy regulations should render the business models of Facebook, Google, and numerous others, all of which depend on a sort of visual stalking, unworkable.
To some degree the federal government’s antitrust actions against Facebook may be a case of too little, too late. However, it also may be the case that the European Union will carry our water for us. The “gatekeeper” provisions in their Digital Markets Act may have much of the same effect. I’ll be interested in seeing how or perhaps whether they enforce them against TikTok.
