Congress moves to let you own your data—and block Big Tech's monetization
H.R. 8652 — YODA · Filed by Michael Cloud (R-TX) · Introduced May 4, 2026 · Referred to committee
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What it does
This bill asserts that users own their personal data and prohibits companies from requiring people to hand over or monetize their data as a condition of using services. It also bars companies from collecting contact information about a user's friends or family without written consent from those contacts. The bill requires companies to let users access, correct, delete, and download their data within 90 days of request, and to disclose which third parties received that data.
Why we flagged it
The bill's operative mechanism is a property-rights and transparency framework for personal data, establishing user control over collection, use, and transfer. It is fundamentally a consumer protection and privacy measure, not a tax, subsidy, or deregulation.
What the text implies
- The 90-day access window and portability requirement may impose significant compliance costs on data-intensive platforms, potentially shifting business models away from free-tier services toward subscription or ad-supported alternatives.
- The written-consent requirement for third-party contact sharing may effectively block social-graph monetization and referral-based growth strategies used by social networks and messaging platforms.
The full analysis lists 5 implications of this text.
Who it affects
The bill restricts corporate data collection and monetization practices, giving ordinary users property rights in their own data and enforceable remedies to access, correct, and delete it. These are direct protections against surveillance capitalism and data exploitation that benefit the general public.