IN THE CURRENT BETA GENERATIONAL digital economy, personal data is the life and blood of personalised service providers. In jurisdictions, where consent is the only legal ground for data processing, for maintaining seamless user experience with preserving the sanctity of user experience, compliance is the balancing act.
It is a challenge for these service providers, particularly for Over-the-Top (‘OTT’) platforms, who stack their business models on targeted advertising and personalised recommendations. Here, the critical question is, how does one seek user consent without turning the user experience into an obstacle course of pop-ups and disclaimers? How does one create a system that feels less like bureaucracy and more like a handshake, an agreement built on transparency and trust?
User experience and consent framework
Consent, under most data protection laws such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, India’s Digital Data Protection Act, 2023, and in comparable jurisdiction frameworks, like Brazil (LGPD) and Japan (APPI), is a user’s freely given, informed, and specific agreement to allow data processing.
User experience plays a pertinent role in the effective implementation of consent-based data processing frameworks. A focus on transparent and user-friendly practices is essential to foster trust and compliance for service providers to navigate the complexities of collecting and managing user data.
Service providers must not view consent as a mere legal formality. Making compliance an effortless part of the journey assures users that their data is in safe hands. To realise this, the consent framework must account on transparency, granularity and constant engagement.
Instead of pushing users towards mindless clicking on endless consent pop-ups, the approach must be informative. It should weave transparency into the interface while ensuring it is not overwhelming. A user should be allowed to review, modify, or revoke consent easily. Plain language should be used rather than technical legal terms. Users first see a concise summary and option before diving deeper into specifics, as per their choices.
Granularity in the spectrum of preference of consent should be available instead of the binary 'Yes' or 'No'. Users should be able to decide: which of their data to be shared with third parties, which categories of consent to be excluded from recommendations, and whether consent is to be used only for recommendations and not for advertising.
Consent should be a constant engagement process but it should be a one time process geared with privacy nudging (where users are encouraged and not forced to share additional data sharing for more tailored experience), adaptive consent settings (where past use behaviours guide their future consent requests), and periodic reminders (where users remain in control of their preferences).
Regulatory compliance
Compliance must not be a straitjacket; it should be a blueprint for responsible innovation. Service providers must pay adherence to consent records, easy consent withdrawal mechanisms, and affirmative and explicit consent.
In India, the DPDPA puts in place strict conditions for consent-based data processing, namely, providing clear notice, ensuring revocable consent, and protecting children’s data with heightened safeguards, with fewer exemptions.
While European Union’s GDPR mandates stricter compliance under multiple legal bases processing, it is more flexible than India. On the other hand, Brazil’s Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados (LGPD) follows a hybrid approach. Japan’s Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI) permits implied consent in specific cases, which is more business-friendly when compared to India’s regime.
These jurisdictional differences in consent framework demand the service providers to customise their consent framework approach region wise to avoid legal pitfalls, while maintaining uniform user experience.
Privacy-enhancing technologies
Service providers by integrating privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), such as homomorphic encryption, secure multi-party computation, and differential privacy, can protect user data and can still bloom on personalised experiences.
Implementing these techniques allow service providers to process data and analyse without revealing individual user data. A decentralised machine learning approach to train models across multiple devices without exchanging raw data, preserving data privacy, should be industrially promoted. Synthetic data generation creates artificial data that mimics real-world data, that can encourage companies to conduct analyses and develop machine learning models without the risk of data exposure.
Consent manager(s) role
An exemplary compliance setup, introduced under India's DPDPA, ‘Consent Managers’ must provide platforms, with accessibility and transparency, that allow data principals (users) the ability to give, manage, review, and withdraw consent. They must ensure data fiduciaries (service providers) can process personal data directly or through intermediaries onboarded on their platform. This role is accountable to data principals and must act as their representative.
Their responsibilities also include maintaining records of consent activities, offering web or mobile platforms for data principals, and implementing audit mechanisms. Restricting the chances of impartiality, consent managers must operate as “data blind,” to avoid conflicts of interest with data fiduciaries.
The DPDP Rules, 2025 inks consent manager's registration conditions, roles, and responsibilities. To register as a consent manager, the entity must be a company incorporated in India, have a net worth of 2 crore rupees, be capable of fulfilling obligations, possess adequate business potential and sound financial health, have reputed directors, senior management, and key managerial personnel, and implement adequate security measures.
On the addendum, consent manager(s) role is a novel add-on essential feature contributing to the times of consent management, but its practical implementation remains untested. Stakeholders need to observe how this concept translates into real-world operations.
Nota bene challenges
The design features of consent forms heavily impact response rates and privacy concerns. Many users’ express confusion regarding the control they have over their personal data. The fragmentation in consent management systems further confuses users which results in inconsistent user experiences and mistrust in data handling practices.
With regard to India's DPDPA, it is likely that service providers in the brackets of smaller enterprises and startups are likely to harbor a disproportionate burden of compliance. With limited resources and infrastructure, they may find implementing systems for consent management challenging. They need to rely on costly external consulting services to align with the DPDP Rules. On the other hand, larger corporations which are innately familiarised to international data frameworks are better positioned to transition seamlessly. This triggers widening the compliance gap between small and large entities.
Beyond regulatory compliance
Compliance is not just a regulation; it is a relationship of trust. Beyond regulatory compliance lies service providers moulding innovative space(s) where users feel comfortable sharing their data, feel respected and reciprocate with engagement and loyalty.
To equalise benefits, service providers can also educate users about how data benefits users, and create friendly channels to voice user concerns, which can be useful to amend current policies and shape future policies.
Coming times shall be consciously projected, not as befuddling service provider-user relationships or rigid framework or a checklist, but as a social contract- scaling that facilitates innovation and user experience, with data privacy and security.