Digital Rights Digest | Dec 22-Jan 4

On Our Radar 🎯

BIG NEWS: As of January 1, 2026, California residents can finally use the Delete Request and Opt-out Platform (DROP) to demand that data brokers delete their personal information—all with a single request.

Data brokers are that shady industry that collect, buy, and sell your personal information to advertisers, insurance companies, employers, and anyone else willing to pay. They know where you live, what you buy, your health conditions, your political views, your financial situation—and until now, getting them to delete your data meant tracking down countless companies individually and submitting separate requests to each one, or using a premium service to do it for you.

DROP flips this on its head. California residents can now visit https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/, verify their residency, and submit one deletion request that covers all current and future data brokers registered with the state (over 500 of them). Brokers don't start processing requests until August 2026.

If DROP works, it can become a template for other states & international regulators. If you're not in California, contact your state legislators and ask them to implement similar systems—California just proved it's possible. There's no reason why the data broker industry should go unchecked.

Bits & Bytes 🤖

~ France Joins Global Social Media Age Ban Wave

France's draft bill to ban social media for children under 15 is complete and heading for legal review, with the government aiming for a September 2026 implementation. The bill cites risks including inappropriate content exposure, online bullying, and altered sleep patterns, stating the need to "protect future generations" from threats to their ability to thrive. Several other countries are following suit: Denmark and Norway are planning similar bans for 2026, and Malaysia is planning an under-16 ban.

Our take: Age verification infrastructure doesn't disappear after checking if someone is 15. Once platforms build systems to verify ages, that same infrastructure can verify identities, track users across services, and create comprehensive profiles of everyone online. What starts as "protecting children" becomes permanent surveillance architecture for all users. The question isn't whether we should protect kids online, it's whether building global identity verification systems is actually the answer, or just security theater that makes everyone less private. (and oftentimes less secure too!)

~ Meta's Playbook for Avoiding Regulators

Reuters obtained internal documents revealing Meta's systematic strategy to avoid cracking down on scam ads while appearing to cooperate with regulators. The goal: make scam ads "not findable" for "regulators, investigators and journalists." Meta identified the exact keywords Japanese regulators used to search for scam ads, then deleted those ads that appeared in an attempt to hide the problem from regulators.

When advertisers get blocked in one country, Meta's algorithms simply reroute their ads to users in other markets. Taiwan reduced scam ads by 96% after requiring verification, but those same ads just moved elsewhere. Meta estimates universal advertiser verification would cost $2 billion and could lose up to 4.8% of total revenue by blocking unverified advertisers. Despite earning $164.5 billion last year (almost all from advertising), Meta decided that's too expensive. Instead, they've decided to resist verification through lobbying and perception management—accepting it only where legally mandated.

Our take: This is corporate accountability failure in its purest form. When a company has a literal internal strategy document for how to game regulators into thinking scams are decreasing while actually just hiding them better, that tells you everything about where their priorities lie. This is a cultural pattern at Meta with all of their products. The most depressing stat here to send the message home: Singapore reports that over 90% of social media fraud victims were scammed through Facebook or Instagram. Meta's response? If they pay us, it's cool.

~ ChatGPT to Explore Ads, Potentially Prioritizing Sponsored Content

Reports suggest the AI could prioritize sponsored content to ensure it appears in ChatGPT answers, meaning companies could pay for ChatGPT to recommend their products when users ask for advice. An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed: "We're exploring what ads in our product could look like. People have a trusted relationship with ChatGPT, and any approach would be designed to respect that trust."

Our take: The entire value proposition of AI assistants is "helpful neutral advice," and that evaporates the moment answers become sponsored placements. When you can't trust whether ChatGPT is recommending something because it's actually good or because someone paid for the placement, the tool loses its core value. We are not inherently anti-AI, but we are anti-enshittification, pro-privacy, pro-transparency, and pro-user. These moves from ChatGPT go against all of our values and we hope they don't inspire other companies to do the same.

This Week on Techlore 📺

It's been a couple weeks since our last newsletter, thank you all for your patience as we navigate the holidays. I am hoping you all had a wonderful time with your loved ones, friends, family, pets, and/or just yourself. We did our best to put out helpful content despite the festive times 🎊

To recap the year, we started a new series, the "Digital Rights Awards," an annual tradition where we give out 10 awards that summarize what happened, and what's to come:

The Year the Internet Changed Forever (2025 Digital Rights Awards)

2025 was the year everything we warned about actually started happening, but we also saw massive wins! This is the first year of The Digital Rights Awards, covering the 10 biggest wins, losses, controversies, and lessons that will shape 2026. Happy new year everyone! Watch on Techlore.TV for an

TechloreHenry Fisher

We sat down with Marloes de Koning to discuss tech policy from a journalist's perspective, as well as age verification, digital sovereignty, news consumption, the rules & role of journalism, and more:

Is the World Too Dependent on American Tech? (Dutch Journalist Interview)

Techlore Talks brings you in-depth conversations with the experts at the forefront of digital rights, privacy and security.

TechloreHenry Fisher

The latest Surveillance Report highlights ChatGPT's decisions to sponsor responses and many other critical stories:

Your ChatGPT Answers Are About to Get Sponsored

Techlore Surveillance Report: Weekly News for Your Digital Freedom

TechloreHenry Fisher

And finally, a few months ago we were invited to Cyprus to attend the Ad Filtering Dev Summit, and we published a recap video on YouTube and PeerTube to showcase the latest developments in the ad-blocking world:

Action Item ✅

• If you're a California resident, submit your DROP deletion request NOW at https://privacy.ca.gov/drop/
• For everyone else: Contact your legislators and ask them to implement similar centralized deletion systems. California proved it's possible, your state or country can do it too.
• And finally: Take a moment to appreciate that sometimes we actually get infrastructure that works. DROP isn't perfect (the August timeline is frustrating), and yes there are exemptions (public records, first-party data, HIPAA-covered medical info). But it's real, it's live, and it begins to shift the burden from individuals to brokers. That's worth celebrating and building on.

Thanks for staying informed, taking action, and being part of building something better. See you next week and happy new year!!

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