#NotGood2Go

Rape and sexual assault are serious, and complex, problems. In the last few years, several consent apps—apps designed to address some of the problems of rape and sexual assault—have garnered widespread attention. In “Could there ever be an app for that? Consent Apps and the Problem of Sexual Assault,” John Danaher not only criticizes the released apps, but also argues that such apps could never help to address the problems of rape and sexual assault they aim to address.

He begins by distinguishing between two different kinds of problems with rape and sexual assault: ex ante and ex poste (Danaher 5). Ex ante problems are the problems that occur before and during rape or sexual assault. So, this category will include not just rapes and sexual assaults, but also misunderstandings about what is needed to make sex permissible, unwillingness to participate in awkward conversations about sex, etc. Ex poste problems are the problems that occur after rape has occurred—problems that arise with prosecuting rape (Danaher 5). Both of these kinds of problems are crucial; efforts directed toward ex ante problems aim to prevent rapes from happening, while efforts directed toward ex poste problems aim to make perpetrators face justice.

Consent apps explicitly aim to address both ex ante and ex poste problems of rape and sexual assault. Generally speaking, they’re meant to both provide resources about consent and its import, and, crucially, to make verifiable records of consent. Different apps achieve these goals differently. Consider the app Good2Go. If Jane wants to have sex with Jill, all Jane has to do is pull up Good2Go on her phone and hand the phone to Jill. Jill will see the question “Are we Good2Go?”, and three response options: “(i) ‘No, thanks’…(ii) ‘Yes…but we need to talk’ and (iii) ‘I’m Good2Go’” (Danaher 8). If Jill selects (iii), she will be taken to another screen where she will be asked to indicate her level of intoxication: “(i) sober; (ii) mildly intoxicated; (iii) intoxicated but Good2Go; and (iv) pretty wasted” (Danaher 8). If Jill selects either (i), (ii), or (iii), she will be asked to provide her phone number, and then an encrypted record of consent will be created. Neither Jill nor Jane would be able to access this record, but it could be retrieved by a court order. However, if Jane selects (iv), “pretty wasted”, she will not be allowed to signal consent. Similarly, if Jane selects “No, Thanks” instead of “I’m Good2Go”, a message pops up reminding both parties that “No means No!” and that ‘Yes’ can be changed to ‘No’ at any time (Danaher 8).

Danaher begins by criticizing Good2Go’s supposed ability to alleviate ex poste problems (problems of prosecution). Good2Go is meant to help with ex poste problems by providing an unambiguous record of consent and intoxication levels. However, Danaher thinks the records it provides are likely to be unhelpful at best, and harmful at worst. His primary objection is that these records of consent will be seen out of context. Without the relevant context, these recordings of consent could be misleading (Danaher 15). Without context, coercion, deception, and intoxication levels could all be easily obscured (Danaher 16). Thus, these recordings of “consent” will not be unambiguous, and they may be taken more seriously than they ought to be. Further, the app provides no way to signal that someone has withdrawn their consent. Thus, if someone does withdraw consent, there will only be record of their given consent, and no record of the withdrawal (Danaher 21). This leads us to another of Danaher’s criticisms: if victims know that there is a record of their “consent”, they will be even less likely to want to press charges than victims already are. Thus, this app could contribute to the already abysmally low rate at which rapes are reported (Danaher 19).

In addition to not solving ex poste problems, Danaher also argues that Good2Go is unlikely to help with ex ante problems. Since these apps are designed to create records of consent, there will be an unavoidable risk to privacy—while the records are encrypted, they are not un-hackable. This will make people unlikely to use the apps. Further, Good2Go is meant to facilitate discussions about sex that people are unlikely to have, since such conversations can be uncomfortable. However, Good2Go’s vague, euphemistic language doesn’t actually facilitate beneficial conversations about sex, but instead promotes more ambiguous conversations.

Danaher thinks there could certainly be better consent apps than Good2Go (he even discusses a (slightly) better designed app, WeConsent, that I do not discuss here because while it is better designed, it still has serious flaws). A better designed app could use less ambiguous language and provide more nuanced options than merely “Yes”, “No”, and “Yes, but we need to talk”. However, Danaher thinks that these apps will necessarily stifle conversations about sex, since they can only provide limited directions which the conversation could go. Further, even a well-designed consent app will be hard pressed to solve both the decontextualization problem and the problem with privacy—in order to solve the decontextualization problem, more context (and so more details) will be needed, but this poses an even bigger threat to privacy. But, the fewer details are given (and so the more privacy is protected), the more context is missing. This leads Danaher to conclude that consent apps that create verifiable records of consent signals—even ones that are well designed—are unlikely to address the problems of rape and sexual assault.

Here's a link to the article: https://philpapers.org/rec/JOHCTE-3