This month, we are featuring the Consentful Tech Project, https://www.consentfultech.io. Directly quoting from their website, “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.”

Learn more about the Consentful Tech Project and latest news here. The project is a labour of love and is currently unfunded: Your support would be much appreciated!

Read a briefing about the project and process below, here, and to read the story in full, please visit the original post on AndAlsoToo’s blog linked here.

If you are a DJN member doing interesting work, and would like to be featured in a future newsletter or blog post, please email us at designjusticenetwork@gmail.com.

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(This article below, originally appeared on on AndAlsoToo’s blog linked here -This is an excerpt of that article!)

CREATING A STANDARD FOR GOOD CONSENT IN TECHNOLOGY with

The Consentful Tech Project

In the world of mainstream digital technologies, consent has meant checking a box that says “I agree to these terms and conditions.” You may not understand what you have agreed to, or you may be forced to agree in order to access important services, but in the eyes of these technology providers, you have provided consent.

Consent in technology also looks like the simple act of leaving home. Out in public, you can legally be subject to video surveillance and in some jurisdictions, the use of facial recognition technology on footage of you. By appearing in public space, you have consented to being monitored.

You can also consent by doing nothing. Your name, age, mailing address, and family members’ names can be listed in online directories until you explicitly request that the information be removed.

Green abstract shape background image with fading color to the edges. Text on top reads “What does consent have to do with technology?”

This view of consent has given rise to a host of issues related to data privacy (or the lack thereof) — issues that have a more profound impact for those who are marginalized by systemic forces like ableism, racism, class privilege, patriarchy, and heterosexism. Having contended with data privacy and equity issues in our personal experiences as well as through processes of designing technologies, we started to ask ourselves, can’t there be a higher standard for consent in tech?

This line of inquiry came about somewhat incidentally when we were working on the Ripple Mapping Tool, an app that crowdsources stories from participants of community programs and generates visualizations of the impacts of those programs. While designing the logic of the storytelling system, we identified the need for strong consent practices to respect the privacy of people who might not want to be named in these stories.

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To finish read this story in full, please visit the original post on AndAlsoToo’s blog linked here. Learn more about the Consentful Tech Project and latest news here. The project is a labour of love and is currently unfunded: Your support would be much appreciated!

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If you are a DJN member doing interesting work, and would like to be featured in a future newsletter or blog post, please email us at designjusticenetwork@gmail.com.