WEBVTT

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Hi, I'm the victim
of an online consent violation.

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It might seem like a weird wording to you,

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but I really hope by the end of this talk

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that consent is going to be
a central tenet

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of how you speak about online rights.

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So let's start, what happened to me?

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In 2011, I woke up, and I couldn't enter
my email or Facebook.

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By the time I gained access into it,

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I realized that I have been a victim
of what is right now called revenge porn.

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But let's walk through
what happened to me.

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At some point, a person decides
that they will violate my consent.

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They break into my email,
they steal my private material,

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they publish it online,

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and then a site
starts profiting off of it,

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all against my consent,
most of it illegal.

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Now we call it revenge porn.

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Because we call it that,

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you might know what I'm talking about
is graphic material.

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For a long while,

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I also thought that this was bad
because it was graphic material.

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I thought I felt shame and I felt pain,
because it was graphic.

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But I realized, when I looked around me,

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that loads of people
were publishing graphic material,

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were participating in graphic acts,
and they were fine.

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It was not a problem for them,
but it was a problem for me.

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I realized that it was a problem
because I hadn't consented,

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because it was against my will,

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that it was not about
the content of the material,

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but about the relationship
that I had with the material.

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This revealed to me some issues
with how we talk about consent,

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and especially, how we talk
about privacy and online rights.

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Right now, when we talk
about privacy and online rights,

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we use the word private material.

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Private material refers to...

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yeah, no one actually really knows
what private material is.

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Is it our address, is it our name,
is it our phone number, what is it?

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We use it all the time.

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Governments, journalists
all talk about this private material,

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but none of us really knows what it is.

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And it's really important,

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because it seems that a lot of people
do worry about surveillance,

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you've all heard about the NSA,
you've all heard about Edward Snowden,

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and you've probably heard
of people like me.

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All these things are related,
it all about internet rights.

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When we talk about privacy, we put
the focus on the nature of the content,

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but the problem is, private content
is different to everyone.

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Everyone has a different relationship
with different types of content.

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I want to switch our conversation
from privacy to consent.

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Every individual's right to consent
needs to be in focus.

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We cannot,
from a normative standpoint, say

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which type of content
should be able to be published,

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or surveilled, or taken in,
and which shouldn't.

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There is no such rule
to make that apply to all.

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We can't have powerful people

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[drawing] a line between public
and private material, and saying,

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"OK, we decide that you can publish
a person's phone number."

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Or "We decide that you could publish

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a picture of a person
without asking them."

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Because we all have
different relationships to privacy.

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We need to put the focus
on the individual rights to consent.

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There are different reasons
why this matters.

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The primary one to me
is the democratic one,

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because who are the people
who are victimized,

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when we use a norm
to define something for everyone?

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It is the people
who are already on the margins,

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and who are already vulnerable.

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It is young women for example,
like it was for me,

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who live a life
with marginalized sexual options.

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Sex is used to shame young women,

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and if that happens in real life,

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it's going to be used
on the Internet as well.

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It is people who are victims
of homophobia, or transphobia,

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who are already vulnerable in society.

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These are the people
who need their privacy most.

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So when we talk about privacy
from a normative standpoint,

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what we do is we marginalize people
who are already vulnerable,

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and we deny rights to the people
who need them the most.

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This is a democratic issue,

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and if we do not focus
on the individual's right to consent,

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we are going to end up reproducing
the same systems of oppression

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that we have in the real world.

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Consent of the individual is
a central democratic point of the Internet

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and I'm going to tell you, none of us
have the right to consent today.

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None of us has the right to say,

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"I want to decide
what is collected off from me,

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and what I want to decide
what is published."

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That is what I found out,
and it is a democratic problem.

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Even though I am a known activist now,

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I will never have the right to have
those old pictures taken down of me,

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because we haven't decided
that it's a right yet.

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I don't have a right to consent
and neither does anyone on earth.

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This is a huge democratic problem.

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We need to create awareness.

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This loose word privacy
that none of us really knows what means

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has made it extremely difficult
for people to relate to these things.

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We hear this talk of privacy all the time,

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it's always like, "Oh, internet privacy,

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they are looking up
your private information,

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we find out that the American government
can find our metadata,"

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- what is metadata, no one really knows -

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This has created apathy:

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we all care about our online rights,
but we don't know enough about it.

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Why?

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I think the word is privacy,
it's gotten twisted out of hand:

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First of all,

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we made it sound like if a person demands
online rights and strict online privacy,

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we call them an outlier,

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we say, "What do you want to hide?

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What is that it's so weird that you think
people are going to find about you?

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Why do you want privacy 
so much more than anyone else?"

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This is a mistake.

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Wanting online privacy
and wanting the right to consent

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should be everyone's basic right.

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That's because we use the word privacy,

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we make it sound
as if it's keeping secret,

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as if someone who wants
privacy is an outlier,

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someone doing something
a little shoddily, a little weird.

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If we use the word consent,

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it's something
that everyone can relate to,

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everyone will relate
to the need for consent.

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I think we all have a pretty regular life,
but we all also want the right to consent.

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We say, like for example,
"I'm a political activist."

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That makes me vulnerable in one way,
I don't want my address to be public.

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For some people,
they wouldn't mind, but I do mind.

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I we shift the conversation to consent,

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we make it much more easier
for people to understand

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what's actually happening
with their information online.

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I think that's important.

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Also, like I talked about before,
there is the democratic issue.

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There is the issue
of not focusing on consent,

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making people on the margins
even more vulnerable.

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Meaning the people who [question]
the top of the status quo,

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people who question sources of power,

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people who do stuff
that makes them vulnerable,

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who challenge norms.

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We need these people,

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we, as a collective, should protect them
and protect their rights.

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If we form a powerful standpoint,

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make a normative judgment
about what privacy is

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we make these people extra vulnerable,
and we don't want that.

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We want an Internet
that is more progressive,

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that is more collectively embracing
of people who challenge the status quo,

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and who makes the world a better place
in and outside the Internet.

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That's why we need to focus on consent

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and not on a construction
of abstract privacy as we do now.

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Consent should be our focus,
because we want a better world,

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and we want the Internet
to be a driver of a better world.

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If we don't focus on consent,

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it will be at the cost
of political dissidents,

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it will be at the cost
of sexual and gender minorities,

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it will be at the behest
of racial and ethnic minorities,

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people who are already vulnerable.

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Every individual
should have the right to consent,

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and we don't right now.

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This is extremely important.

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It's not about privacy,
it's not about keeping secret,

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it's about getting to decide

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what is front stage
and what is back stage.

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It's the central part
of what it means to be human.

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There is no difference between real life
and the Internet anymore,

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these things are the same,

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and of course, we should have
the same rights online.

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Even if it's difficult,
it's a fight that it's worth fighting,

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because then we make an Internet
that is even better

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than the real life that we have right now.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)