Yes: Affirmative Consent as a Theoretical Framework for Understanding and Imagining Social Platforms Jane Im Jill Dimond Melody Berton Una Lee University of Michigan Sassafras Tech Collective Sassafras Tech Collective And Also Too Ann Arbor, MI, USA Ann Arbor, MI, USA Ann Arbor, MI, USA Toronto, Ontario, Canada [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Katherine Mustelier Mark Ackerman Eric Gilbert University of Michigan University of Michigan University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI, USA Ann Arbor, MI, USA Ann Arbor, MI, USA [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] ABSTRACT 1 INTRODUCTION Affirmative consent is the idea that someone must ask for,and Affirmative consent is the idea that someone must ask for—and earn, enthusiastic approval before interacting with someone else. earn—enthusiastic approval before interacting with another per- For decades, feminist activists and scholars have used affirmative son [62, 93]. Sometimes referred to by the shorthand “yes means consent to theorize and prevent sexual assault. In this paper, we yes,” affirmative consent is, at its core, a precursor to interpersonal ask: Can affirmative consent help to theorize online interaction? interaction designed to ensure agency and positive outcomes. For Drawing from feminist, legal, and HCI literature, we introduce the decades, feminist activists and scholars have used it to theorize feminist theory of affirmative consent and use it to analyze social and prevent sexual assault [62, 80, 93]. Here, we ask: Can affirma- computing systems. We present affirmative consent’s five core con- tive consent similarly help theorize online interaction and, perhaps, cepts: it is voluntary, informed, revertible, specific, and unburden- prevent its harms? some. Using these principles, this paper argues that affirmative con- This paper introduces the feminist theory of affirmative consent sent is both an explanatory and generative theoretical framework. and applies it to social computing systems. We present affirmative First, affirmative consent is a theoretical abstraction for explain- consent as five core concepts—which are derived from feminist, le- ing various problematic phenomena in social platforms—including gal, and HCI literature in the context of social platforms: affirmative mass online harassment, revenge porn, and problems with content consent is voluntary, informed, revertible, specific, and unburdensome. feeds. Finally, we argue that affirmative consent is a generative Using these five principles, we argue that the lack of affirmative theoretical foundation from which to imagine new design ideas for consent explains many existing problems on social platforms. In consentful socio-technical systems. her influential feminist HCI paper, Bardzell contended that feminist theories are not only critical strategies, but also action-based design CCS CONCEPTS agendas [6]. Similarly, we propose that affirmative consent provides • Human-centered computing → Collaborative and social com- a theoretical foundation from which to imagine new futures for puting theory, concepts and paradigms. interacting online. First, we explore how affirmative consent can explain problem- KEYWORDS atic phenomena on social platforms. After exploring “zoombomb- ing” [91, 117], people in abusive situations disconnecting from their affirmative consent; consent; social platform; socio-technical gap abusers [45, 123], and encountering triggering content [48], we ACM Reference Format: present three detailed case studies through the lens of affirma- Jane Im, Jill Dimond, Melody Berton, Una Lee, Katherine Mustelier, Mark tive consent: mass online harassment, revenge porn, and problems Ackerman, and Eric Gilbert. 2021. Yes: Affirmative Consent as a Theo- with content feed algorithms. For instance, prior work has docu- retical Framework for Understanding and Imagining Social Platforms. In mented problems with content feeds—often related to their opacity CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’21), May [25, 41, 42, 51, 52]. We re-frame these feed issues as violating affir- 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 18 pages. https: voluntary //doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445778 mative consent’s principle: simply put, users cannot tell systems what they want in their feeds. Revenge porn, on the other hand, most problematically violates the specific principle: consensu- Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed ally sharing intimate photos with partners does not entail consent for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation to re-sharing with others [32]. We argue that affirmative consent on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or is a theoretical abstraction for understanding various problematic republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission phenomena on social platforms, and can be part of the Bardzell arc and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]. to “integrate feminism in a more intellectually rigorous way ... that CHI ’21, May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan © 2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM. encompasses both theory and design practice” [6]. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-8096-6/21/05...$15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445778 CHI ’21, May 8–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan Im et al. Figure 1: Structural diagram of this paper’s theoretical argument. Explanatory means the theory can explain various phenom- ena, while generative means the theory can be used to create solutions or insights to tackle problems. Second, this paper argues that affirmative consent is generative. paper include a mix of women and men and comprise Asian, Asian- A micro-social rather than macro-social theory [69], affirmative Canadian, and White people. With the majority of the authors from consent naturally complements social computing interaction design the United States and Canada, we have considered historical move- at an elemental level. We use the five core concepts of affirmative ments, feminist scholarship, legal scholarship, and social platforms consent to generate 35 design proposals for future, socio-technical from the North American context. We believe it will be beneficial for systems that encode affirmative consent (see Table1). Examples future work to look at other cultural contexts. Some of the authors include: are also members of or have closely interacted with queer, trans- gender, and disability communities, and those experiences have Voluntary Content Feeds: Content feeds that ask what you impacted our perspective on consent. We acknowledge that all want to see today, this week, etc. (See Figure2.) anti-oppression lenses contribute to highlighting non-consensual interactions on the Internet. Technology perpetuates and magnifies Revertible Profile Pages: Revert posts, comments, and tags the existing social structures—which oppress marginalized pop- on profile pages using features resembling the Git revert ulations, including people of color, disabled people, lesbian, gay, command [29]. (See Figure3.) bisexual, transgender (LGBTQ) people [34, 133]. Thus, while we Unburdensome Messaging: Leverage network data to control focus on feminism in this work, we also consider race [134], dis- who can chat with you. For example, people can only mes- abilities [34], and queer identities [113]. We believe by considering sage you if a friend previously initiated conversations with various power imbalances, we can aim to redistribute benefits and them. (See Figure4.) harms more equitably—rather than having our insights maintain, or even exacerbate, existing power relationships in the offline world. In this design work, we reflect on the socio-technical gap[2] induced by reifying affirmative consent in software. For example, Content Warning: This paper discusses sexual violence against women enforcing complicated, multi-step consent protocols everywhere throughout the paper. would likely come with extraordinary costs for users. While soft- ware’s rigidity may have certain upsides in this context (e.g., ensur- ing consent actually happens [112]), careful, strategic computation 2 RELATED WORK is necessary to ameliorate the gap. We first review affirmative consent work from scholars and social Figure1 presents a structural diagram of this paper’s theoretical movements. Next, we situate consent in social computing systems argument. In the following sections, we provide an overview of af- as a socio-technical gap; in particular, we argue that systems may ac- firmative consent movements and scholarship; position affirmative tually clarify consent processes (through software’s rigidity [112]), consent as a socio-technical gap; introduce the core concepts of af- and strategic computation may ease the burden of communicating firmative consent; illustrate how the affirmative consent framework consent boundaries. is both explanatory and generative; and, conclude by discussing the framework’s implications and future directions. 2.1 Affirmative Consent Movements and Scholarship 1.1 Position Statement Feminist literature and movements anchor our definitions of con- We briefly pause to introduce an author position statement. Fol- sent because this praxis centers those who