Author Archives: bredemarket

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California AB 566 Web Opt-Out Preference Signal (the California Opt Me Out Act)

A new bill has been enrolled in California, where I live. But how will this affect web browser developers outside of California?

The bill is the California Opt Me Out Act, AB 566. The text of Section 2 of the bill is found at the end of this post. But the two major parts of the bill are as follows:

Google Gemini.
  • Starting in 2027, businesses that create web browsers, regardless of their location, must include “functionality configurable by a consumer that enables the browser to send an opt-out preference signal to businesses.”
  • Web browser developers that do this “shall not be liable for a violation of this title by a business that receives the opt-out preference signal.”

The bill doesn’t get any more specific than that; the California Privacy Protection Agency will work out the details.

The part of interest of course, is that happens to businesses that develop web browsers WITHOUT the opt-out functionality. What happens to those non-compliant businesses? What is the liability? Is it civil? Criminal? If Safari doesn’t include easy-to-use opt out functionality, will Tim Cook do time?

This is yet another example of the debate that occurs when one country, or one state, or one county/city enacts a law and expects the rest of the world to comply. In this particular case, the state of California is telling every web browser developer in the entire world how to configure their browsers. The developers have several choices:

  • Comply with California law, while simultaneously complying with laws from all other jurisdictions regarding opt out. Including a theoretical business-friendly jurisdiction that prohibits opt out entirely.
  • Ignore the California law and see what the California Privacy Protection Agency does, or tries to do. Is Yandex, the Russian developer of the Yandex browser, going to really care about California law?
Google Gemini.
  • Contest the law in court, arguing that it violates the U.S. First Amendment, the U.S. Second Amendment, or whatever.

The ball is now in the hands of the CPPA, which needs to develop the regulations to implement the law, as well as develop the penalties for non-compliant businesses.

Here is the exact text of Section 2.

SEC. 2.

Section 1798.136 is added to the Civil Code, to read:

1798.136.

 (a) (1) A business shall not develop or maintain a browser that does not include functionality configurable by a consumer that enables the browser to send an opt-out preference signal to businesses with which the consumer interacts through the browser.

(2) The functionality required by paragraph (1) shall be easy for a reasonable person to locate and configure.

(b) A business that develops or maintains a browser shall make clear to a consumer in its public disclosures how the opt-out preference signal works and the intended effect of the opt-out preference signal.

(c) The California Privacy Protection Agency may adopt regulations as necessary to implement and administer this section.

(d) A business that develops or maintains a browser that includes a functionality that enables the browser to send an opt-out preference signal pursuant to this section shall not be liable for a violation of this title by a business that receives the opt-out preference signal.

(e) As used in this section:

(1) “Browser” means an interactive software application that is used by consumers to locate, access, and navigate internet websites.

(2) “Opt-out preference signal” means a signal that complies with this title and that communicates the consumer’s choice to opt out of the sale and sharing of the consumer’s personal information.

(f) This section shall become operative on January 1, 2027.

An Alternative to “I Ask, Then I Act”: “Review. Plan. Execute.”

Back in July, I shared a post and a video based upon the simple phrase “I Ask, Then I Act.”

I ask, then I act.

To be honest, this is not a revolutionary insight. A lot of people have described the things that do or do not happen before you take action.

  • There’s Nike’s famous “Just Do It.” This wasn’t necessarily intended to imply that you proceed in a thoughtless manner. Nike was instead addressing the tendency to hesitate, and urging people to move forward.
  • Now there are phrases that DO imply (at least in my humble opinion) that you proceed in a thoughtless manner, the two most famous of which are “ready, fire, aim” and “move fast and break things.” Both of these, especially the latter, suggest that the act of doing is itself empowering and that the negative consequences of doing something bad can be mitigated by doing the right thing later.

But on Wednesday I ran into another phrase that urges that you do something BEFORE you act, but it uses a different formulation than my two-step process.

Before the Constant Contact keynote.

I attended the Small Business Expo in Pasadena on Wednesday, at which the first keynote was delivered by Dave Charest of Constant Contact. He let us know at the beginning of his keynote that he was going to repeat the following throughout:

“Review. Plan. Execute.”

Unlike me, Charest got a little more granular about what happens when you execute / act. In a LinkedIn post from a couple of weeks ago, Charest talked about each of the three parts of RPE. Yeah, he has an acronym. Because AARC.[1]

✅ Review: Where are you right now?
You don’t need to be an expert. Just be honest about what’s working and what’s not.

✅ Plan: What’s the one thing you can do to support your goal?
Not ten things. One. Focus is how you win.

✅ Execute: Block time on your calendar to actually do the work.
If you don’t protect that time, distractions will take it from you.

Charest’s “review” step maps to my “ask” step, but I didn’t explicitly call out the “plan” step like Charest did. But I have talked about “focus” a lot, which is the emphasis of Charest’s “plan” step. Don’t go all over the place. Just do one thing. He parallels Wally Schirra’s thoughts on this issue.

“With my eyes fixed on the control panel, studiously ignoring the view, I began a slow, four degrees per second, cartwheel.”

When Schirra went into space as part of the Project Mercury program, he was focused on the goal of completing his engineering tasks. While the view from space was spectacular, he ignored it and focused on the control panel. And the engineering tasks were themselves focused, explicitly avoiding “Larry Lightbulb” experiments. This was a reaction to the prior Scott Carpenter mission.

But whether you review and plan, or if you just act, I believe you need to prepare before you do the thing.

[1] AARC: Acronyms are really cool.

Jane Says…Nothing

Remember Jane, my Instagram AI influencer? 

Well, I received this notification on Instagram:

“Your Al JaneCPAInfluencer is now private because it goes against our Al Studio policies. Please edit it and submit again.”

Naturally I wondered what the violation was. I was directed to the policies at https://aistudio.instagram.com/policies/.

Which part of the policy does Jane violate? That’s a secret…yet another example of “you violated our terms, but we won’t tell you the specifics; YOU figure it out.”

So, since I can still access Jane myself, I asked her. AI is supposed to help you, after all.

“What portion of the Meta AI Studio Policies do you violate, Jane?”

Her response:

“I can’t respond because one or more of my details goes against the AI Studio policies.”

That answer caused me to wonder if Jane would respond to anything.

“Who is Bredemarket?”

“I can’t respond because one or more of my details goes against the AI Studio policies.”

So is it critically important that I spend a lot of time figuring out what the violation is? Um…no.

But I’m curious how this interaction will affect the ads that Meta will present to me later this year.

The Lights Are Going Out

When it looks like no one is at your business, no prospects will come.

Fix this with Bredemarket prospect-targeted content. https://bredemarket.com/mark/

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers

By the way, note Google Gemini’s artificial imitation of a sense of humor by designating one of the open businesses as the City Lights Bookstore.

Conceptualization of the Planet Bredemarket and Its Rings

Inspired by the Constant Contact session I attended at the Small Business Expo, I wanted to conceptualize the Bredemarket online presence, and decided to adopt a “planet with rings” model.

Think of Bredemarket as a planet. Like Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Jupiter, the planet Bredemarket is surrounded by rings.

Google Gemini.

The closest ring to the planet is the Bredemarket mailing list (MailChimp).

The next closest ring is the Bredemarket website (WordPress).

Moving outward, we find the following rings:

  • Search engines and generative AI tools, including Bing, ChatGPT, Google, Grok, Perplexity, and others.
  • The Bredemarket Facebook page and associated groups.
  • The Bredemarket LinkedIn page and associated showcase pages.
  • A variety of social platforms, including Bluesky, Instagram, Substack, and Threads.
  • Additional social platforms, including TikTok, WhatsApp, and YouTube.

While this conceptualization is really only useful to me, I thought a few of you may be interested in some of the “inner rings.”

And if you’re wondering why your favorite way cool platform is banished to the outer edges…well, that’s because it doesn’t make Bredemarket any money. I’ve got a business to run here, and TikTok doesn’t help me pay the bills…

Your Product is “AI-Powered”? There Are Two Problems With That Marketing Message.

How does this sound?

“State-of-the-art, frontier AI.”

Or this?

“The ultimate creative AI solution.”

There are two problems with these “AI-powered” product marketing messages, and you probably don’t even realize the first one.

The first problem

Because you and your friends are so used to seeing the letters “AI” that you know to pronounce each letter separately, as in A I.

But most people don’t know this. Really, they don’t. So when they see those two capital letters next to each other, they think they’re supposed to emit a high-pitched scream.

Try it yourself. Read the sentence below, but instead of speaking the letters A and I in a normal tone of voice, yell them as a single interjection.

“State-of-the-art, frontier AI.”

Google Gemini.

Is that how you want your customers to talk about your product?

The second problem is more obvious…I hope.

The second problem

Despite its undeniable impact on all of us, artificial intelligence is just a feature. Like the Pentium, or Corinthian leather.

And it’s a feature that everyone has. Not a differentiator at all.

To say your software is AI-powered is like an automotive company saying their cars have tires.

Google Gemini.

How many times do you see Ford or Toyota saying their cars have tires?

They don’t waste their time talking about something that everyone has.

And you shouldn’t waste your time talking about your AI feature.

(Also see Pavel Samsonov’s statement that “Powered By AI” is NOT a value proposition.)

Talk about your critically important benefits instead.

And if you need help with this, talk to Bredemarket.

Not because Bredemarket uses AI. My use of AI for client projects is strictly limited.

But because I work with you to speak to your prospects and customers.

Talk to me: https://bredemarket.com/mark/

Stop losing prospects! Use Bredemarket content for tech marketers