Good Luck Opting Out: Tesla, Meta, Amazon, Google, X, Uber, OpenAI, Tinder and 30 other companies make it almost impossible for users to control what happens to their personal data
https://epic.org/good-luck-opting-out-manipulative-design-patterns-in-opt-out-processes-2/
Full Report (PDF).
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For data brokers, you can pay to have various services just run around and keep requesting that said companies purge data about you. They just full-time implement automating opt-out and deletion requests. E.g.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incogni
Incogni is a subscription-based personal information removal service that automates opt-out and deletion requests to public and private data brokers on behalf of users.[1] The service was created by Surfshark in 2021 and launched publicly in 2022; it was later offered as a standalone product.[2]
That being said, I’d imagine that if enough people do something like that — and setting aside the rather ludicrous situation that requires it — at some point, you’d just see data brokers operating in locales that aren’t subject to requirements to honor such requests to insulate them. I don’t think that it can really be a solution for society as a whole.
I’m pretty sure that a realistic whole-society solution needs to involve not leaking information in the first place, placing technical barriers rather than legal ones.
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Partly why I barely use any of them.
While the most obvious way to keep control remains: to not use those, or to stop using them.
The moment they will notice a significant enough bleeding of users leaving their platform/services, they will have to change the way they behave.
Facebook at least is well known for collecting data on people without Facebook account, and without any consent, so I would say sometimes just not using is already not enough, unfortunately
They’d be more likely to bribe lawmakers to somehow make it mandatory to use them.