Consent: It’s Not Just for Doctors’ Offices Anymore—Tech Needs It Too

\ When you hear “consent,” you might think of signing forms at a doctor’s office, giving the medical team permission to treat you. This kind of medical consent is critical, ensuring patients understand what’s being done to their bodies and can make informed choices about their health. However, there is another realm where consent plays a crucial role — the world of technology and data privacy. In this series, I’ll explore how the principles of medical consent that govern our most critical health decisions also apply to the digital landscape. This discussion aims to be both simplified and insightful, offering a fresh perspective on consent that is reshaping the tech world.

What is consent?

Consent, broadly, is “explicit permission.” While medical consent is one of the most prominent forms of consent — thanks to robust legal and ethical guidelines — it’s far from the only kind. Consent applies to many aspects of life, ensuring individual autonomy and rights. In the context of tech and privacy laws, consent means getting clear permission from users to process personal data. The fundamentals of consent, whether in a hospital room or a digital platform, share many common values: informed decision-making, transparency, and the ability to withdraw permission at any time.

Why does consent matter?

People, corporations, and regulators are thinking about privacy more than ever before. The risk to individuals is no longer theoretical.

\ The concept of consent is central to various privacy regulations, such as:

• Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which requires explicit consent for processing personal data, with specific guidelines for obtaining and managing consent.
• The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), which mandates consent for collecting and processing sensitive personal information.

\ Companies building for or scaling to such consent regions need to go through massive undertakings to comply with privacy regulations — consent manager, automated data subject request (DSR) workflows, secure data storage and transmission channels, monitoring for continuous compliance, etc. More on this later.

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Medical Consent and Data-Use Consent Parallels

Digressing from discussing consent in tech, let’s think about medical consent.

\ The fundamental principle of medical consent is autonomy: it’s a patient’s right to understand and make decisions about their own body. A doctor can’t simply assume patients will agree to a procedure; they must explain the risks, benefits, and alternatives, and then receive an explicit and informed “yes” from the patient. Even after consent is given, the patient has the right to change their mind or seek a different treatment at any point.

\ In discussing medical consent, we can see parallels to consent in tech and privacy laws:

1. Informed Decision-Making

   Patients need to understand why a procedure is necessary, what will be done, possible outcomes, and potential risks. In data privacy, users should know how their data is collected, used, and shared.

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2. Affirmative Consent

   A patient must give a clear “yes” to proceed—no one should perform procedures without that explicit go-ahead. Similarly, in data usage, users must actively opt in, rather than be opted in by default.

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3. Granular Control

   In medicine, patients might consent to one procedure but decline another—they can’t be forced into an all-or-nothing approach. The same holds for data collection: users should decide which pieces of data they share and with whom.

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4. Consent Revocation

   A patient can withdraw consent at any time, even if it’s mid-treatment (assuming it’s safe to stop). Likewise, in data privacy, people must be able to retract their permission with minimal hassle or penalty.

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Practical Application in Software Development

To provide a more practical understanding, here are examples of where and how consent should be asked for in software applications:

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1. Onboarding Screens:

• Example: When a new user signs up for a service, present a clear consent form explaining how their data will be used.
• Best Practice: Slack effectively uses onboarding screens to obtain user consent. \n

1. Settings Menu:

• Example: Allow users to access and manage their consent preferences within the app settings.
• Best Practice: Google provides comprehensive data control options in their account settings.

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3. Feature-Specific Prompts:

• Example: For features requiring additional data (like location services), prompt the user at the time of feature activation.
• Best Practice: Apple is known for its transparent prompts for permissions.

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Conclusion

We drew lessons from medical consent to discuss data-use consent — recognizing the value of informed, voluntary participation, and respect for autonomy. The goal of focusing on consent is to empower individuals and encourage companies to build trustworthy data-use frameworks. As privacy rights become a higher priority, standardized infrastructure and clear communication around consent will be indispensable.

\ In the next part of this series, we’ll dig deeper into the technical side — how companies can structure their consent mechanisms and continuously maintain compliance. Stay tuned!

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Further Reading

For those interested in diving deeper into this topic, here are some recommended readings:

• Shoshana Zuboff's "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism"
• Helen Nissenbaum's "Privacy in Context"
• GDPR Official Guidelines

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About Me

I am an engineer at Meta working at the unique intersection of Responsibility & Privacy with Monetization, responsible for keeping Meta products accessible and compliant around the world. Most recently, delivering the Subscription for No Ads in Europe. Here is my LinkedIn profile if you want to connect or know more about me.

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