A privacy policy change that took effect on October 16 opened a loophole in a promise Google had upheld for years: data from connected Gmail, Drive, and Photos accounts can be used to train Personal Intelligence AI for personalized ads. Pay attention to the dates—the change took effect on the 16th, but Decrypt didn’t uncover it until the 24th. No one emailed you during those eight days. After watching on-chain data for so long, I’m especially wary of the words “consent by default.” When a tech giant changes its wording from “not used for advertising” to “used for personalization,” it’s the same people’s data assets being used—the only difference is that you don’t hold the ledger. Decentralized storage has been talking about data sovereignty for years; this is a real-world case in point. But a narrative is just a narrative. Before you put Gmail on-chain, ask yourself whether you’re willing to pay gas every time it’s accessed. My take is simple: every time the policy changes, your data gets monetized one more time, and all you can do is go into settings and manually turn that switch off. $NEAR