Document Type

Article

Publication Title

California Law Review Online

Publication Date

2026

Abstract

In Brokering Safety, Sharma, Kadri, and Adler urge federal policymakers to impose on data brokers the greater duty of policing and stemming online stalking, harassment, and related abuse; that burden should not fall to victims, they argue. Their proposal would close the unevenness among state laws, shift the burden of oversight away from victims, and, importantly, ensure accountability at a systemic level, addressing gaps in enforcement that allow brokers to evade meaningful consequences. Yet, the one-stop-shop solution that Brokering Safety proposes also accedes to the core neoliberal presumption insofar as it individualizes harm. Online abuse, like dark patterns and surveillance pricing, is just one of the many inevitable consequences of the laissez-faire regulatory approach to commercial surveillance in the United States. Given the authors’ stated concern about information asymmetries, we might assume that they would turn to structural fixes like broad purpose limitations or data minimization rules that reduce the pecuniary incentive to traffic in personal data. Such measures have the added advantage of mostly avoiding the First Amendment hurdle to the extent they are neither content-based nor have incidental effects on the lawful distribution of truthful information. In the end, this short response essay argues that Sharma, Kadri, and Adler are right to attend to data broker harms, but their recommendations for reform are incomplete given the information asymmetries that motivate their intervention in the first place.

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