The commodification of consent

Abstract

In the commodification of consent, a legal concept designed to empower users has been transformed into an asset that can be traded across firms. Users interact with a consent dialog offered by one coalition member. The default setting allows any other coalition member, including both publishers and third-party vendors, to use this consent as a legal basis for processing personal data. In doing so, the commodification of consent creates interdependent privacy considerations within the notice and consent paradigm. This paper considers how this legal innovation could change the distribution of revenues among firms. Our model shows coalitions create the most value for firms with large consent deficits, which describes the proportion of users who the firm does not directly obtain consent from. The market leader in consent can capture all of the coalition fees by forming a series of 2-firm coalitions. Finally, a model extension shows how consent coalitions shift users towards providing consent to the coalition against the users’ wishes even though the probability of erroneously providing consent in a given dialog remains unchanged.