California adopted the country’s first major consumer privacy law. Now, Silicon Valley is trying to rewrite it.

Adopted in 2018, the California Consumer Privacy Act grants Web users the right to see the personal information that companies collect about them and stop it from being sold. The law applies only to CA residents, but its backers hope it might someday spur regulators around the country to follow suit — and force the tech giants to change their practices nationwide. But powerful business organizations — representing retailers, marketers and tech giants — have responded by seeking sweeping revisions to the law before it goes into effect. So far, they haven’t been successful in a campaign that privacy advocates deride as an attempt to weaken consumers’ rights. But they haven’t relented, either, with only two weeks remaining to CA’s legislative calendar. The lobbying barrage even has involved their own websites: A page on Facebook and an account on Twitter called Keep the Internet Free began sharing videos this summer encouraging people to spare online advertisers from adhering to some of CA’s new privacy rules. The Internet Association has spent nearly $176,000 lobbying on the matter and other issues over the past three months -- the most it has ever spent in a single three-month period in Sacramento.