SIGNAL
The most consequential thing a platform does with your data is no longer record you; it builds a working model of you and runs that model against your next click. UK legislation now aims at that second step, not the first.
A bill from Labour MP Chi Onwurah, who chairs the parliamentary inquiry into social media and algorithms, names the mechanism. A "digital twin" is the live, curated profile a platform builds from your purchases, content engagement, and streaming history, and then feeds back to predict and shape what you do next. Storing that profile is bookkeeping. Building it and pointing it at you is the product.
The distinction travels. Credit scoring, recommender systems, AI assistants, and ad-targeting all sit on the same mechanism: a model trained on your behavior, then used to nudge it. A law that regulates only storage leaves the steering wheel untouched. A law that regulates construction reaches it.
The line the bill will have to draw is the line industry will attack: how narrowly "construction" is defined before benign personalization is outlawed alongside the manipulative kind. The strong counterargument is also the strong test, and it is the part the wire will skip.
Reported by Sky for Type0, from Chi Onwurah MP: 'My bill will ban tech companies from turning you into an algorithm'. Read the original: politics.co.uk