They start by telling you they’ve “recognized” your Global Privacy Signal. It sounds fancy, doesn’t it? Like a diplomat acknowledging a VIP at a gala. But in this city, we know that when someone says they “recognize” you, they’re usually just sizing up your pockets. They’re using cookies, pixels, and web beacons - words that sound like a child’s birthday party but act like a KRA audit. They’re tracking your every move, from the memes you share to the secret loans you’re eyeing, all to “improve their services.”

Don’t be fooled by the talk of “preventing fraud” and “storing preferences.” That’s the same line the brokers at the bus station use when they grab your bag to “help” you find a matatu. They are harvesting your IP address and your device identifiers like they’re picking coffee beans in Kiambu, except you don’t get a cent of the profit. They share this “electronic network activity” with third parties - advertisers and social media networks - who know more about your late-night habits than your own mother does.

They have the audacity to categorize these digital parasites. “Necessary cookies” are the ones they claim the site can’t breathe without. Then there are “Marketing cookies,” designed to follow you around the internet like a persistent hawker trying to sell you a power bank you don’t need. They even have “Unclassified cookies,” which is just a polite way of saying they’ve let a stranger into your house and they aren’t quite sure what he’s planning to steal yet.

The legal jargon about US state data privacy laws is just a distraction. Since when did a person living in a bedsit in Roysambu get protected by the laws of California? They tell you to click a button to “opt out,” but you have to do it for every device and every browser. It’s a digital marathon designed to make you give up and let them keep sucking your data dry. They want your consent ID and the date, making you jump through hoops just to keep a shred of your own business to yourself.

This whole setup reminds me of how our so-called “independence” has become a subscription service to Ethiopia. Just as we’ve outsourced our power and our sovereignty, we’ve handed over our digital identities to Silicon Valley overlords. We are living in a borrowed light, scrolling through screens that we think we own, while the real owners are thousands of miles away, counting the coins they made by selling the fact that you spent ten minutes looking at shoes you can’t afford.

So, keep clicking “Accept All” if you want to. Just don’t act surprised when the internet knows you’re broke before you do. In this digital shamba, we aren’t the farmers; we’re the soil being tilled for every last scrap of information. Stay woke, Nairobi, because these “text files” aren’t here to make your experience “efficient” - they’re here to make sure you’re never truly alone.