Your Data Has Already Been Sold. Here's How to Want It Back

Shane Hewitt and The Nightshift · Feb 19, 2026 · 9m

Data sovereignty asks a question that feels simple until you sit with it: was the consent you gave to share your data actually informed? You joined social media for your own reasons, and somewhere along the way those posts became something else entirely. Tourists visiting the US for FIFA or the Olympics may now face a requirement to hand over five years of social media history at the border, and that use was never part of any agreement you thought you were making.

The people who invented the web itself, Tim Berners-Lee and Jaron Lanier among them, have spent years building a different model…