The Clickwrap as Platform Governance: Assessing the Frequency of Manipulative Interface Designs During Digital Service Sign-Up

A clickwrap is a set of digital, on-screen prompts designed to facilitate online consent processes for digital services. The findings of this quantitative content analysis of clickwraps (n = 50) suggest that it is a common user-interface feature during digital service sign-up. Furthermore, results identify similarities across the sample of social media, e-commerce, and brick-and-mortar services suggesting the clickwrap is a manipulative design. All 50 clickwraps had accept prompts appearing as a colorful button. Conversely, policy details (i.e. terms of service and privacy policies) that should be a primary focus of online consent processes were presented as a policy link in 49 of 50 cases, with the prompt for accessing policies designed as a colorful button in 0 of 50 cases. The link text was smaller than the accept button text in 49 of 50 cases, and links appeared below a more prominently displayed accept button in 21 instances. The accept button text rarely expressed a connection to an online consent process, focusing almost exclusively on service sign-up, with “Create an Account” or “Sign Up” being the most common. Designs sometimes (13 of 50) included an additional checkbox, providing an additional online consent prompt. Overall, this suggests clickwrap designs privilege service sign-up instead of user engagement with online consent materials, aligning with concerns asserting manipulative designs can create a problematic sense of urgency, and even misdirect or exploit users. These common clickwrap designs exemplify platform governance concerns as they help structure the extent to which the user can address the information and power asymmetries common to user-service relationships. Maintaining these asymmetries via the manipulative designs identified suggests digital service providers are ignoring longstanding calls from government for privacy-forward self-regulation that will help users realize online protections.