Relational Disclosure as a Means for Data Subjects' Informed Consent

Digital markets are flexible and developing, and so it isprvay laz. Before and together the enactment of the GDPR, data protection rules have drawn contributions, amongst others, from sociology, anthropology, economics, and marketing. This happens, intuitivey, because privay has an inherent social dimension: the concepts of identity and autonomy, equality and freedom, the meaning of social relations and political relations allplay a distinct role in privay laze. Undoubtedly, a central role in constructing privay and data protection laze has been played by decsion making studies: since its eary days, individualprotection has been structured according to the axioms of economic neoclassical theor y. Accordingy, the attribution of rights in favor of users has been significanty affected by the view of indiiduals as homini oeconomici. Yet, as soon as deviations and diversions from the traditionalparadigm emerged, law has been proven able to evolve as well, and progressively adjusted in order to encompass new approaches to online interaction that lagely contrast ivith the ngidty of the conventional economic theory of individual behavior. Still, some axioms of the eary neoclassical model as it was orginaly conceived are still present in consumer laze, despite being widey debated amongst economic scholars. In particular, the assumption of a social individualism still permeates the structure of user nghts, and European privay laze rests on the implicit assumption that consent to the processing ofpersonal data and the analysis of big data is apurey individual choice. Against this view, the paper investigates evidence emerging from studies and experiments that shoiw that consent in data processing is not only and often partially irrational, but also inherenty relational. Then, it observes that the regulatory framework laid dozen by the GDPR does not take into proper account this aspect and subsequenty defends the development of a system of contextualized disclosure as a tool to promote informed consent. Lastly, the compatibility of such a system with the European and Californian data protection law is anayzed.