As the United States projects former Vice President Joe Biden to be the winner of the 2020 presidential election, data privacy advocates are hailing the passage of Proposition 24 in California. Prop 24 closes a loophole in California's current privacy law that companies could use to send targeted advertisements to users even if they opt-out of sharing their data.

According to the New York Times election dashboard, Prop 24 passed with 56% of 14.6 million ballots with a recorded response. However, the results gathered at the time of writing are still unofficial, as poll workers are still counting ballots in California.

The proposition closes an existing loophole in California's consumer privacy law that was found to have allowed tech companies to send targeted advertisements to consumers even if they opted out of sharing their data. Alastair MacTaggart, who pioneered Prop 24 alongside the Californians for Consumer Privacy advocacy group, found that when the original privacy law was drafted, it didn't seem to consider targeted advertisement to be a form of selling user data. Proposition 24 takes effect on January 1, 2021, which will inevitably require companies to evaluate their terms of use and privacy policies before the new law is in effect.

"We are at the beginning of a journey that will profoundly shape the fabric of our society by redefining who is in control of our most personal information and putting consumers back in charge of their own data," said MacTaggart of the unofficial passage of the new law.

However, the proposition doesn't appear to be perfect in its implementation, as pointed out by various advocacy groups, such as the ACLU. Concerns arose that the measure would further the practice of some companies charging users who opt-out of sharing their data, which disenfranchises low-income users who cannot afford this. There were also complaints that the measure should have forced opting-out of data sharing to be the default choice to counter most websites having opting-in to data sharing as the selected option unless changed.