Northeastern Law Professor and Student to Study How Platform Design Shapes Data Power

06.02.26 — Professor Hilary Robinson and law student Nadir Hamid ’27 have received a seed grant from the Northeastern University Institute for Information, the Internet and Democracy (NULab) — one of the first grants awarded to a law student-faculty team collaborating with another university unit — to investigate how the legal and technical architecture of digital platforms strips users of meaningful control over their own data, and what an alternative might look like.

“Empirical research is the basis of technical engineering – and it can and should be the basis of ‘legal engineering.’ Rules (law) and tools (technology) are important structuring forces that generate social order, and figuring out how they interact in specific ways in the world through research is the essential basis for better legal management of technological things, processes, and organizations,” said Robinson, whose research concerns the interaction between technological change and legal decision-making in the construction of social order, particularly as legal institutions engage in decision-making about technological things and practices.

The proposed research zeroes in on a structural imbalance that is hiding in plain sight: the “user agreements” that govern how platforms collect and monetize personal data are presented through software interfaces designed to minimize users’ awareness of what they are consenting to. Robinson argues this is not just a transparency problem but a design problem — one with legal remedies. Drawing on contract law and emerging data governance frameworks in the U.S. and EU, the project will map where existing platform systems concentrate control, identify the legal chokepoints that entrench that control, and model what user-centric alternatives might look like in practice.

A key case study will be CUDIS, a blockchain-secured smart ring built around the idea that individuals — not platforms — own their health data and can choose how to share or monetize it. Robinson and Hamid will use that model to develop a broader framework for decentralized, user-controlled data architectures in which access is governed by revocable, auditable permissions rather than one-sided boilerplate agreements. The project will produce a policy-oriented research paper and a prototype framework for implementing user-controlled data systems, with an eye toward ongoing legislative and regulatory debates in Washington and Brussels.

“Too often, users are asked to trade away control over their data through systems that make consent feel automatic rather than meaningful. By looking at the legal terms and technical design of platforms together, this project asks how we can build systems that give people more practical authority over how their data is accessed, used, and valued. I’m excited to work with Professor Robinson on what more meaningful, user-centered data control could look like in practice,” said Hamid, who plans a career in technology transactions and intellectual property, and hopes to eventually build a company focused on using legal and technical tools to solve problems in the digital economy.”