We caught companies making it harder to delete your personal data online

This is one of several deceptive design patterns used by data brokers. Last year, we (the nonprofit consciousdigital.org) published a guide titled "How Deceptive Design is Used to Compromise Your Privacy and How to Fight Back". It contains 10 data protection deceptive patterns and countermeasures:

https://consciousdigital.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/dece...

This is why it's very costly and time consuming to construct regulation that actually works. Crafting a set of rules that properly counter a system set up with incentives to do otherwise is pretty tricky.

I feel like it would be better if we could find a way to disincentivize companies from hanging on to your data. Maybe treating it as some kind of taxable asset.