ABSTRACT Cambridge Analytica was a political consulting business that became known for its use of personal data obtained from social media platform Facebook, to drive election campaigns on behalf of its clients. Their most famous client was the winner of the 2016 US Presidential election. When it was realised that Cambridge Analytica had acquired Australian Facebook users’ data, the Australian privacy regulator started litigation against Facebook to enforce the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth). This article examines how the Facebook litigation and subsequent law reform activities shed light on the central, yet fictitious role of the consent model. A historical and cultural analysis reveals how consent to surrender private information is a symptom of social conditions in which we take it for granted that individuals, rather than business, will bear the costs of poor privacy outcomes. Our collective ‘consent realism’ not only constrains the imagination of policy makers but interferes with a person’s autonomy in forming and developing opinions. However, a right to privacy can be more viably re-asserted, at least in response to the Cambridge Analytica incident, within the framework of Australia’s implied freedom of political communication. Consent realism can thus potentially be overcome in favour of human rights principles.