The population (especially the younger generation, who never seen a different kind of technology at all) is being conditioned by the tech industry to accept that software should behave like an unreliable, manipulative human rather than a precise, predictable machine. They’re learning that you can’t simply tell a computer “I’m not interested” and expect it to respect that choice. Instead, you must engage in a perpetual dance of “not now, please” - only to face the same prompts again and again.
My government, my company, my former university and even my former highschool have all identified “understanding consent” as a significant social problem worthy of significant spending on PSAs and education programmes.
But even as people are learning about how consent is like tea, they are being exposed every day to software and services that treat it as informed consent if you don’t dig into settings to disable something, don’t actively delete your account when they arbitrarily change their terms of service, or offer a “contract” with a piece of software you’ve already purchased that you can’t negotiate.