Our society is becoming increasingly digital. In particular, the developments surrounding the COVID-19 global pandemic—which compelled many people, governments, companies, schools, universities, etc. to embrace an almost entirely online life—made it even more clear as to how online technologies are co-producing our personal and social lives and professional interactions, while blurring the lines between the two. As the prevalence of our online activities becomes more and more prominent, so do the concerns about digital privacy and online consent. Too often, companies follow business models that perceive users’ (i.e. customers’) personal data as a siloed resource, owned and controlled by the data controller rather than the data subjects. Collecting and processing such massive amounts of personal data could have many negative technical, social and economic consequences, including invading people’s privacy and autonomy.  As a result, regulations such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) have tried to take steps towards a better implementation of the right to digital privacy. Yet despite new legislations, users do not actually have the ability–and have not been empowered by interdisciplinary solutions–to exercise their rights as granted by the GDPR. The challenges of accessing user rights are highly problematic for both users and data processors alike: users face numerous difficulties in accessing their rights and data processors struggle to provide them effectively as doing so is slow, complex and time consuming. More often than not, the existing solutions do not take into account the cognitive, collective and contextual dimensions of consent, although these dimensions have been frequently studied and reported in academic literature, including our published articles (e.g. Human et al., 2019; Human & Cech, 2020; Human & Wagner, 2018).

References:

Human, S., & Cech, F. (2020). A Human-centric Perspective on Digital Consenting: The Case of GAFAM. Human Centred Intelligent Systems 2020, Split, Croatia. https://epub.wu.ac.at/7523/

Human, S., Neumann, G., & Peschl, M. F. (2019). [How] Can Pluralist Approaches to Computational Cognitive Modeling of Human Needs and Values Save our Democracies? Intellectica, 70, 165–180.

Human, S., & Wagner, B. (2018). Is Informed Consent Enough? Considering Predictive Approaches to Privacy. CHI2018 Workshop on Exploring Individual Differences in Privacy.