Platform privacy and legal pressure widens

A Dutch appeals court said X must give privacy researcher Danny Mekić access to the personal data it holds on him after restricting his account. (rechtspraak.nl) The Amsterdam Court of Appeal ruled on April 14 that X had to provide access under Article 15 of the General Data Protection Regulation, the European Union law that lets people see data a company has processed about them. The court said X can withhold employee names and exact action timestamps, but the earlier penalty of 4,000 euros a day remains in place. (rechtspraak.nl) (nltimes.nl) Mekić’s case started after X temporarily limited his account in October 2023 following a repost of a Dutch broadcaster NOS story about European Union child-abuse-material rules. When X did not give a clear explanation, he asked to see the company’s records, including material tied to an internal system called Guano Notes. (nltimes.nl) (rechtspraak.nl) In California, a separate pressure point opened on the same day. KQED reported that an independent March 2026 audit of web traffic found Microsoft, Meta and Google appeared to ignore state privacy rules that require businesses to honor browser-based opt-out signals. (kqed.org) The signal is called Global Privacy Control, a browser setting or extension that tells websites not to sell or share a user’s data. The audit said Google failed to honor the opt-out 86% of the time, Meta 69% and Microsoft 50%, and said 194 advertising services and 55% of nearly 7,000 California sites set advertising cookies despite opt-out requests. (kqed.org) (globalprivacyaudit.org) California already has a record of enforcing those rules. The state attorney general’s office says Disney agreed in February 2026 to pay $2.75 million over allegations it failed to fully carry out consumer opt-out requests across Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+, after Sephora paid $1.2 million in 2022 for ignoring Global Privacy Control. (oag.ca.gov) (globalprivacyaudit.org) Google is also facing a different legal threat from the companies that buy ads on its systems. Claims Journal, citing Bloomberg, reported on April 14 that advertisers are organizing mass arbitration claims seeking damages tied to court rulings that found Google held illegal monopolies in online search and advertising technology. (claimsjournal.com) Mass arbitration pools at least 25 similar claims that would otherwise be forced into one-by-one arbitration under contract terms. Lawyer Ashley Keller said the first advertiser filings were expected this week, and estimated search and display-ad claims could reach $218 billion or more; Google said in a recent filing that it could not estimate possible losses and would defend the claims. (claimsjournal.com) The three fights are moving on different tracks, but they all turn on the same question: what platforms must disclose, stop collecting, or pay for when their systems affect users and customers at scale. In Amsterdam, that now means handing over records to one user; in California and U.S. arbitration, the next tests are whether regulators and buyers can turn audit findings and monopoly rulings into penalties and payouts. (rechtspraak.nl) (kqed.org) (claimsjournal.com)