The Internet of Consent  ## Metadata - Author: [[Anil Dash]] - Full Title: The Internet of Consent - Category: #articles - Document Note: --- tags: - #internetofconsent - #privacy - #digitalrights Author: Anil Dash Source: Anil Dash’s blog post “Internet of Consent” (May 27, 2025) Reference: https://www.anildash.com//2025/05/27/2025-05-27-internet-of-consent/ date created: 2025-05-27 10:45 --- # Title: 🌐 The Internet of Consent: Rethinking Digital Privacy and User Agency ## Table of Contents:  - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#-notes) - [📖 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical validity](#-logical-validity) - [🔍 DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🔍 SEO Evaluation](#-seo-evaluation) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ## 📝 Summary: Anil Dash’s article “Internet of Consent” critically explores the growing complexities of digital privacy and user consent in the contemporary web ecosystem. He advocates for a reimagined internet framework prioritizing genuine user agency, transparent data practices, and meaningful consent rather than opaque, misleading “privacy” notices. The piece examines current challenges with consent fatigue, dark patterns, and regulatory gaps, urging technologists and policymakers to build systems that respect autonomy and foster trust online. ## 📖 Main Content: Dash argues that the current internet’s approach to privacy is broken because it often reduces consent to a perfunctory checkbox buried in lengthy legal jargon. This “consent theater” fails users by overwhelming them with confusing terms and defaults favoring corporate data harvesting. He calls for a “consent-first” internet where user choices are simple, reversible, and embedded into user experience design. The article unpacks how consent should be active, informed, and continuous rather than a one-time acceptance. Dash emphasizes building tools and protocols that empower users to understand and control their data flows in real time. He also critiques legislative frameworks that focus on compliance over user empowerment. Technologists are encouraged to innovate beyond mere checkbox compliance towards interfaces that prioritize ethical data stewardship. Dash envisions an internet where user identity, privacy settings, and data sharing preferences are interoperable and standardized across platforms, making digital consent more meaningful. The article weaves examples of poor consent practices alongside promising emerging models, such as decentralized identity and privacy-enhancing technologies. Dash closes with a call to action for builders, regulators, and users to collaboratively reshape the web as a place where consent is respected and data dignity is foundational. ### 🗒️ Notes - **Introduction: Consent is Broken** - Consent reduced to legal boilerplate and cookie banners - Users face fatigue and deception instead of clear choices - **Consent Theater and Its Harms** - Dark patterns exploit users into unwitting data sharing - Lengthy privacy policies obscure true intentions - Consent often designed for corporate benefit, not user autonomy - **Vision for a Consent-First Internet** - Consent should be active, granular, and ongoing - Interfaces must be simple, transparent, and easy to change - Real-time control over data use rather than one-time acceptance - **Limitations of Current Regulations** - Focus on checkbox compliance misses empowering users - Regulatory enforcement struggles with complex consent flows - **Technological Solutions and Innovations** - Decentralized identity as a model for user control - Privacy-enhancing technologies reducing data exposure - Standardized consent protocols enabling interoperability - **Calls to Action** - Designers and developers to prioritize user agency - Policymakers to focus on enforceable, user-centric frameworks - Users to demand transparency and control over their data - **Broader Implications** - Trust as foundation for sustainable digital ecosystems - Ethical data use benefits all stakeholders, not just companies ## 📖 References: - Dash, Anil. “Internet of Consent.” Anil Dash Blog, May 27, 2025. https://www.anildash.com//2025/05/27/2025-05-27-internet-of-consent/ - GDPR and CCPA legislative texts for background on consent law. - Recent studies on dark patterns and consent fatigue (e.g., [Mathur et al., 2019](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3290607.3299032)). ## 🗣️ Paraphrase:  1. Original: *"Consent on the internet today is largely a ritual with little real power for the user — an endless series of clicks and acknowledgments that do not translate into meaningful control over personal data."* Paraphrase: Today’s online consent often amounts to mere formality, where users mechanically click through prompts without gaining genuine authority over how their data is handled. 2. Original: *"Building a consent-first internet means designing systems where users’ data choices are clear, actionable, and revisitable — fostering trust through transparency and simplicity."* Paraphrase: Creating an internet centered on consent requires systems that make data decisions obvious, easy to act on, and changeable, thus building trust via clear and straightforward interactions. ## 📰 Newsletter: 🔐 Struggling with endless cookie pop-ups and baffling privacy policies? This week, Anil Dash’s “Internet of Consent” offers a fresh perspective on digital privacy and user agency. The article critiques how current “consent” is often meaningless theater and urges for a user-first internet where privacy settings are simple, transparent, and truly empowering. For WordPress developers and open source advocates, this means designing experiences that respect users’ data dignity and build real trust. Dive in for actionable insights on shaping a privacy-respecting web — and learn why consent isn’t just a checkbox anymore. Read it here: [Internet of Consent](https://www.anildash.com//2025/05/27/2025-05-27-internet-of-consent/). ## ✅ Action Items: - Integrate user-centric consent design principles into WordPress plugin and theme development, emphasizing clarity and reversibility. - Educate contributors on ethical data practices and the importance of meaningful consent beyond regulatory compliance. - Advocate within GoDaddy and the broader WordPress community for privacy-by-design approaches aligned with Dash’s vision. - Develop training materials that help new open-source contributors understand privacy challenges and user empowerment. - Align OSPO initiatives with cutting-edge consent and privacy-enhancing technologies to build sustainable user trust. - Monitor evolving regulatory landscapes and translate them into actionable developer guidance. ## 🧪 Hypotheses: - Implementing clear, user-friendly consent mechanisms improves user trust and engagement on websites. - Transparent and granular consent options reduce user frustration and consent fatigue. - Open-source projects adopting privacy-by-design principles see higher contributor and user retention. - Regulatory frameworks emphasizing user agency lead to better compliance and less punitive enforcement. ### 📊 Methodology: - User experience testing comparing traditional cookie consent banners with consent-first designs. - Surveys measuring user trust and understanding of privacy controls before and after redesigns. - Case studies of WordPress plugins adopting enhanced privacy controls. - Policy analysis comparing jurisdictions with different consent standards and resulting compliance rates. ### ❓ Questions: - How can WordPress better support developers in creating truly consent-first user experiences? - What are practical ways to simplify privacy controls for non-technical users without losing nuance? - How can community educ - Summary: A blog about making culture. Since 1999. - URL: https://www.anildash.com//2025/05/27/2025-05-27-internet-of-consent/ Click “I agree” to continue. You didn’t click it, though. Or maybe you did? I don’t know, it doesn’t matter. The concept of consent doesn’t exist on the modern internet. You didn’t read the terms of service. You didn’t agree to accept cookies. I didn’t consent to having my site pulled into the training model for that artificial intelligence system that’s going to use to sell the fruit of my labor for profit. I didn’t agree to have my activity tracked across all these different websites and cobbled together into a creepy and inaccurate profile of my preferences that gets sold without my permission. Nobody asks for anything, they just take it. There’s not even an *acknowledgement*, that any of this stuff is happening let alone a conversation about it. Meanwhile, we’ve been telling our kids that the standard for decent people is enthusiastic consent. That’s very evidently not the case for the tycoons running the technology industry. #### The Internet of Creeps At the beginning of the web, people used to get together and create informal standards for how to describe what you would allow people to do to your website, or to your content on the internet. It was so broadly understood that you would respect the visitors to your site that you didn’t even *have* to ask their permission, because there would be a massive user uproar if you were to do something so hostile as to surveil them or track them. You treated visitors to your website with the same respect that a restauranteur would treat patrons who had sat down to eat a meal; it would be exceedingly weird and creepy if you were to film them eating, or if you wrote down every word they said to each other and sold them to a stranger, or if you sniffed them while they ate and then said “I think I can guess what brand of perfume you’re wearing, can I order some more of it for you?” Obviously, gradually the standards shifted and all of the major websites became creeps who sniff their patrons. First, it was tracking what you clicked on, and what you searched for. Later, it was what search terms *brought* you to the website. There was a *huge* fight in the late 90s about the technology that Google later acquired, which allowed for tracking users *across* different websites, with activists (correctly!) saying it would allow for unprecedented spying on users, and open up individuals to tracking by entities like governments, both foreign and domestic. Between the Snowden revelations and platforms like Facebook rapidly expanding to unimaginable levels of global surveillance of billions of users, the reality turned out to be far, far worse than even the worst-case scenarios that those 90s-era activists had warned about. #### It’s Worse Than You Think Now, people don’t even really understand the degree to which things are happening without their consent online. Have you ever gone to type a message in a comment box on social media, or began entering a search term online, and then thought the better of it and deleted it without actually submitting the form? Did you know that those sites *used the words you typed anyway* and incorporated them into their profile of your interests and preferences? What about every site that you’ve signed up for in the past, when you *did* check that “I agree” box when you were creating your account — did you read the whole terms of service? I didn’t think so. Well, I’ve not only read the terms of service, I’ve *written* more of those TOS than I care to recall, and the wild thing about them is that generally, they all say “we can change this any time we want”. *Thirteen years ago* I [wrote a column in wired](https://www.wired.com/2012/08/ts-column/) about how Facebook was unliaterally changing its TOS while offering no recourse to its users. Just in the [first five years alone](https://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/) of Facebook’s existence, they modified their privacy settings countless times to shift nearly all content from being virtually completely within your circle of friends to completely visible to the entire internet, without ever asking for user consent for any of the changes. Creators and artists have always been the community most at risk for tech companies make choices about their work without their consent. When Napster launched at the end of the last century, musicians' work was shared without their consent, and the debate was framed as being about software innovation vs. record labels, instead of centering artists and their rights, since it was easy for fans to hate labels. When YouTube launched 20 years ago and countless videos were uploaded without the permission of their creators, it again got framed as a battle between big media companies and upstart tech platforms, with the same tactic of focusing on user convenience to distract from the issue of creators' consent. We're seeing the same playbook being used again, but this time many regular consumers are not falling for the AI companies disregarding creators' right to consent in how their work is used. While extremists behind some of the AI platforms (and their corrupt cronies in positions of political power) are even willing to destroy the entire copyright system to enable this heist, it's an interesting evolution of culture that fans have aligned to stand behind the artists they love. #### Consent Culture Comes Online I'm not surprised to see the expectations shifting around consent online. We've seen a generation grow up with expectations that they should have control over what happens to them, and that they should have agency over their work and their lives. They're extremely fluent in the impacts of the digital platforms that they use every day, and even if people don't explicitly think about digital experiences in terms of consent, they intuitively understand when it's missing. The growing frustration around "enshittification" is, in no small part, grounded in a huge frustration around having a constant feeling of being *forced* to use features and tools that don't respect our choices. We're constantly wrestling with platforms that don't respect our boundaries. And we have an uncanny sense that the giant tech companies are going behind our backs and into our lives in ways that we don't know about and certainly wouldn't agree to if we did. As I've been spending time building tools to help people fight back, like giving creators tools to protect their sites or apps or content from AI bots, or teaching people how to lock down their personal profiles online, I'm finding a lot of enthusiasm, even from people who don't see themselves as being very technical, in taking control of their digital lives. There's a common thread that ties together concerns about privacy, security, even just basic usability for so many of the tech products we use today. It just boils down to whether the people who make the technology that we use believe that we should be in control. It's simple: Technology should only ever do exactly what we have explicitly given it our consent to do. The institutions that don't understand that basic principle need to start paying a heavy cost for their transgressions., The Internet of Consent, Anil Dash, 01jw968vf9ecdq6xacgtzv1qkp.