The Consentful Tech Project

Origi­nal website here

A lot of us have heard about consent with regard to our physi­cal bodies, like in the context of medi­cal deci­si­ons or sexual acti­vi­ties. But what does consent mean when it comes to our data and our digi­tal lives?

Consent­ful tech­no­lo­gies are digi­tal appli­ca­ti­ons and spaces that are built with consent at their core, and that support the self-deter­mi­na­tion of people who use and are affec­ted by these tech­no­lo­gies.

The Consent­ful Tech Project raises aware­ness, deve­lops stra­te­gies, and shares skills to help people build and use tech­no­logy consent­fully.

Good digi­tal consent is…

The Consent­ful Tech Project’s defi­ni­tion of good digi­tal consent is adap­ted from Plan­ned Parent­ho­od’s defi­ni­tion of sexual consent, which abbre­vi­a­tes to the easy-to-remem­ber, tasty acronym “FRIES.” Accor­ding to this defi­ni­tion, consent must be:

Freely given.

Doing somet­hing with some­one is a deci­sion that should be made without pres­sure, force, mani­pu­la­tion, or while inca­pa­ci­ta­ted.

In tech­no­logy, if an inter­face is desig­ned to mislead people into doing somet­hing they normally wouldn’t do, the appli­ca­tion is not consent­ful.

Rever­si­ble.

Anyone can change their mind about what they want to do, at any time.

In tech­no­logy, you should have the right to limit access or enti­rely remove your data at any time.

Infor­med.

Be honest. For exam­ple, if some­one says they’ll use protec­tion and then they don’t, that’s not consent.

Consent­ful appli­ca­ti­ons use clear and acces­si­ble language to inform people about the risks they present and the data they are storing, rather than burying these impor­tant details in, for exam­ple, the fine print of terms & condi­ti­ons.

Enthu­si­as­tic.

If some­one isn’t exci­ted, or really into it, that’s not consent.

If people are giving up their data because they have to in order to access neces­sary servi­ces and not because they want to, that is not consent­ful.

Speci­fic.

Saying yes to one thing doesn’t mean they’ve said yes to others.

A consent­ful app only uses data the person has directly given, not data acqui­red through other means like scra­ping or buying, and uses it only in ways some­one has consen­ted to.

We encou­rage you to use the FRIES frame­work to think through how consent­ful the tech­no­lo­gies we’re using and buil­ding are, and how much we consi­der consent in the ways we inter­act with each other, both offline and online.

RESOURCE

Buil­ding Consent­ful

Tech Zine

PURCHASE A HARD COPY

DOWN­LOAD

Buil­ding Consent­ful Tech is a free 28 page zine for anyone who uses, makes, or is affec­ted by digi­tal tech­no­lo­gies and wants to build a more consent­ful world. Inten­ded as a commu­nity conver­sa­tion star­ter rather than a compre­hen­sive guide, it was writ­ten with input from dozens of tech­no­lo­gists, desig­ners, and commu­nity orga­ni­zers.

Note: we track the number of times these resour­ces are down­lo­a­ded but do not track any other infor­ma­tion about visi­tors.