The click pretends to be a decision

Ulysses has himself tied to the mast before sailing past the Sirens. It is the first contract in Western literature in which someone protects their future will from an environment designed to bend it.

Today the Sirens have an interface. The "Accept all" button is big, colourful, within thumb's reach. "Manage preferences" is grey, small, three screens away. The law looks at the outcome — consent was given — and declares itself satisfied.

The presumption of understanding

Our legal system rests on a useful fiction: informing someone is enough for them to have understood. I publish the notice, notify the terms, make the document available. From then on, understanding is your responsibility.

For centuries this presumption was unavoidable: there was no way of knowing what happened in a reader's mind. That is no longer true. We can measure how long a text takes to read, where the eye stalls, how much cognitive load a clause produces. What becomes possible, sooner or later, becomes due.

A ritual without content

The click has become a liturgy: a gesture that produces lawfulness without producing understanding. Users are not to blame — not reading forty pages for a €2.99 app is rational. It is an architecture problem.

In Habeas Mentem I propose an inversion: instead of asking people to prove their will was flawed, we ask whoever designed the environment to prove it was not.

We don't need to abolish consent. We need an honest ritual.