The Limits to Digital Consent

<p>Within ethical design practices, informed user consent is a key requirement in the effort to invert the power imbalances fostered by the digital platforms that enable platform owners (organizations, governments, etc.) to build data profiles and make decisions about people. Much work has been completed by designers, activists, and aligned policymakers to translate data governance policies into plain-language and comprehensible consent. But the question remains: How well do these efforts account for the broader socio-technical power structures inherent in all personal data collection? Through a series of interviews with advocates for individuals and communities whose lives are often dramatically affected by data surveillance, this study finds that ongoing attempts to cultivate informed consent into data-driven systems likely fall short of their stated goals. The current implementations of ethical digital consent indicate that platform designers and policymakers have an insufficient understanding of systems complexity at scale, political accountability, the power dynamics inherent to organizational politics, and the second- or third-order effects of local-first data strategies. This study documents the inherent threats and risks for consent-driven digital technologies that current approaches do not address.</p>