[HN Gopher] Terms of Service; Didn't Read
___________________________________________________________________
Terms of Service; Didn't Read
Author : hugoroy
Score : 154 points
Date : 2021-01-10 12:36 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (tosdr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (tosdr.org)
| curlyQueue wrote:
| Reputable source who goes over Instagrams latest, quick 10 min:
|
| https://youtu.be/VhSX7IzHkrE
| [deleted]
| II2II wrote:
| On the first day of a university course, several hundred students
| asked to line up and sign a two page agreement in order to access
| computing resources necessary for the course. When my turn came,
| I asked where I could read it without holding up the entire line.
| They were shocked that anyone would ask such a question, though
| they provided me a space to read over the document.
|
| If blindly signing a contract one of the first things that
| computer science students encounter, I'm not surprised that they
| simply put up those ToS without the expectation that they will be
| read.
| hnarn wrote:
| I was kind of hoping that this was going to end along the lines
| of "I was actually studying law and the professor then called
| us out on the importance of reading contracts that you sign,
| and proceeded to list all the ridiculous things we had just
| agreed to".
|
| Too bad.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| When I went into sing my Mortgage Loan, the officer pointed at
| the X's and said "sign here, here, and initial here, here, and
| here"
|
| I then turned to page one and started reading.
|
| The conversation that ensued, where they tried to get me to
| sign without "wasting their time" was amazing. I get I'm
| unusual for wanted to read what I'm signing, but I can't have
| been the only one. I do suspect I was one of the rare ones that
| they couldn't bully into signing quickly.
| vsareto wrote:
| It's the same thing with leases and technology.
|
| This apartment has smart home things (hub, A/C, smart lock)
| that's controlled through a mobile app. The lease _says_ you
| 're responsible for supplying the internet for the devices and
| calling the company when the app or devices are not working,
| but the apartment complex insists they take care of it (they
| really do, they didn't lie). But there were no solid answers on
| why this section was in the lease and it was completely false
| as I haven't had to support or provide internet for any of the
| devices.
|
| This led to: "I don't want to support it, I'd rather remove
| them and just use a physical key" but they weren't able to
| remove them, nor remove the section from the lease.
|
| I get it, they aren't lawyers, but it's weird when you read it
| and realize how different things are in the real world compared
| to some of the agreements we all sign (completely the opposite,
| in this case). If it came to it, I have no doubt I'd still be
| held to the terms of the lease though.
| joekrill wrote:
| It's absolutely astounding to me how many folks blindly sign
| legal documents. Especially employment related. Whenever I've
| pushed back on an employment contract, NDA, or similar it's
| always met with sudden confusion - as though this has never
| happened before. In fairness, it's almost never met with
| negatively. But it shows that no one else has ever bothered to
| question it. And when I talk to colleagues I definitely get the
| sense that no one ever really reads these things or questions
| them.
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| When I have pushed back on the same topic, it usually is met
| with negativity. I believe recruiting and hiring staff have
| some incentives to treat you like you're crazy if you want
| special provisions or need clarification on complex terms.
|
| In my career, I've negotiated
|
| - a severance package in my offer letter from a company that
| said, "we don't offer severance packages as a matter of
| policy."
|
| - a sign on bonus from a company that said, "we don't offer
| sign-on bonuses as a matter of policy."
|
| - a longer expiration period for startup options, as well as
| partial acceleration of vesting in the case of a significant
| liquidity event, from a company that said, "we can't modify
| our standard equity agreement papers."
|
| - immediate full vesting of matched 401(k) contributions from
| a company that said, "our policy is that matched
| contributions only vest after 1 year."
|
| - ability to expense my own Linux workstation, which I could
| keep, in the offer letter, from a company that said employees
| are only allowed to be issued Mac laptops.
|
| - explicit extra section in the offer letter stating that any
| IP created by me using only my personal equipment and
| personal time was my sole property and was explicitly not
| subject to any part of the employee handbook dealing with
| ownership of IP.
|
| In all these cases, the conversation usually started out with
| me being gaslit about all this being impossible or my
| expectations being crazy. But after sticking to my
| requirements, eventually it normalized out into a sincere
| discussion.
|
| I should add, all these examples came from very large
| companies except for the case of the options expiry and
| acceleration.
|
| I also gave a hard "no" to many companies over the years that
| wouldn't negotiate on topics like these, and I can say I
| don't regret it one bit. There's never been a case where I
| said no to a job offer over inflexibility on all these topics
| and then later regretted it.
| letitbeirie wrote:
| Do you mind if I ask what you do exactly? It would be
| interesting to know whether:
|
| - you have a specific skillset and experience that give you
| a negotiating position not enjoyed by most, or
|
| - most developers are significantly underestimating their
| negotiating position
| toast0 wrote:
| Some of those negotiations seem like a pretty hard
| bargain (can they give different 401k vesting terms to
| some employees and not others?), but your position when
| you've got an offer is pretty strong.
|
| They've invested a significant amount of time finding
| you, and assuming you're good at what you do, it's going
| to take a lot to find another acceptable candidate.
|
| Nobody wants to have to report that the candidate didn't
| start because of something relatively minor, so restart
| the hiring machine.
| sizzle wrote:
| How did you do this without scaring the hiring manager?
| Assuming the hiring manager has to vouch for you to their
| bosses to get the negotiated terms, you must have a very
| sought after skill set?
|
| Or is this purely negotiating with HR and/or legal for
| contract terms concessions without hiring manager as it
| doesn't come from their budget?
| mlthoughts2018 wrote:
| The first thing you have to realize is that the hiring
| apparatus in the company is bureaucratic. They aren't
| scared, mad, judgmental, whatever. They are going to be
| thinking more about what's for lunch and whether they can
| cut out early next Friday than about your candidate
| profile or negotiation.
|
| As long as you are polite but firm, they aren't likely to
| think anything. They'll just figure they either like your
| profile and want to work with you, or they'll figure they
| know they can't meet your requests.
|
| Always present flexibility even if you aren't actually
| flexible. In theory, if they cannot give a severance
| package, maybe they can give a much higher sign on bonus,
| or something else you want. Let them know what's
| important to you, but that if there are other ways to
| address what you're looking for, you're open to hear it
| and think about it.
|
| Once you're at the stage of making concrete requests,
| don't be vague and don't accept vague alternatives.
| Always ask for concrete alternatives and once it is
| stated, always take time to think about it offline,
| always. That way if you decide you're not actually
| flexible, you have breathing room to process your
| decision and respond.
|
| You should also project confidence about your worth and
| why you are asking for something.
|
| For example, for negotiating a severance package, you
| should be very clear about it. In my case, that mattered
| to me because I was relocating to a new area and at the
| same time I was switching from individual contributor to
| manager. I felt the risk of the local job market for an
| inexperienced manager was high, so if the company I was
| joining would have restructuring or sudden cuts and I am
| laid off, the money to float myself in the new region
| would be high. To feel comfortable about this, I just
| wanted to know for sure if that kind of change was
| coming, I would have X months of salary as a cushion.
|
| If a recruiter or hiring manager is too immature to
| appreciate this as a sincere concern / request of a
| candidate, and would punish me just for asking either by
| acting like severance is a taboo way to protect
| insecurities of being fired or acting like I'm a prima
| donna, well that makes the decision to walk away pretty
| obvious for me.
|
| The main thing is just remember they don't owe you any
| special features in a job offer and they absolutely won't
| offer them unless you ask and make it clear it matters to
| you.
|
| But you also don't owe them anything either, certainly
| not any expectation about being "too fussy" or "scaring"
| them. Nobody's going to look out for what you want as a
| candidate except you.
|
| As long as you're polite but firm, and you make clear
| asks and require clear commitments, you should feel
| completely confident asking for anything you want.
| Whether you're willing to compromise or you need to say
| "no," you'll be doing yourself a big favor.
| brightball wrote:
| Same. I've never seen anyone balk. If anything it shows
| attention to detail.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| The problem arises especially when the document is written in
| legalese. I also feel like I'm not really qualified to
| understand these documents - they are generally written for
| people who have the appropriate qualifications.
|
| For example when buying a property in the UK, the soliciter
| will be the one parses the legal documents. It's crazy to
| think that normal people are expected to fully understand
| these, and it doesn't surpise me when they just blindly sign
| them. At the end of the day they want the thing and carry on
| with their lives - throwing caution to the wind.
| mech422 wrote:
| I feel this is one of the major problems with most TOSs...
|
| You generally don't have a lawyer around to explain every
| TOS you come across, so people ignore them and hope for the
| best.
|
| Hmm - I wonder if there would be a niche for a website that
| explains specific, common TOSs in easy to understand terms?
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| We've all been hearing about machine learning algorithms
| that can parse legalese and pull out the important bits
| given parameters of interest. So certainly a possibility.
|
| HN make it so!
| mech422 wrote:
| Does that mean we'll sprout a generation of "Legal SEO"
| lawyers that try to game the algorithms ? :-P
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Tbh I don't find tos very hard to understand. They are
| akin to programming for the law. And generally speaking
| they just tell you what you should already know about the
| terms under which you use the service, so that you can't
| sue the service for absurd things.
|
| For the sake of demonstration, I just went and read the
| first seven sections of Personal Capital's TOU. Not a
| single surprise in there, so far. To give one example,
| section 5 just says that for the sake of displaying the
| information you are agreeing that personal capital can
| retrieve on your behalf, personal capital has your
| authorization to act legally on your behalf. This is to
| prevent some idiot from suing them for fetching account
| info that said idiot inputted into personal capital.
| Another section says, hey, we aren't responsible for
| mistakes you make with your investments, even if you base
| your decisions on the information we show to you. Which
| is a perfectly reasonable thing as well -- you literally
| could not run a service like this otherwise.
| throwaway2048 wrote:
| Reminds me of a recent change in the privacy policy of my
| bank, it spends pages and pages talking about "getting my
| consent to use my private information" in all sorts of
| contexts strongly implying they will ask me before selling
| off my information, then later, in a different part it
| defines my "usage of the service" as consent for them to
| use said info.
| de_nied wrote:
| That's why documents written in legalese always define the
| words used before they start using them. At least in the
| U.S.
| pjmlp wrote:
| In Germany it is even considered another language, kind
| of.
|
| https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verwaltungssprache
|
| Which kind of translates into Officialese as per
| Wikipedia.
|
| Defining words is not enough, the grammar and sentence
| formulation are also very convoluted in regards to the
| common language.
| de_nied wrote:
| Simply from my own experience in dealing with U.S. legal
| documents, specifically U.S. law, it is usually enough to
| Google the terms and understand the meaning. If the
| phrasing is convoluted to the point of needing Academics
| explain it, then it's usually defined by a court ruling
| on its meaning.
|
| Terms of service is generally easier to read because it's
| more simplified and typically doesn't use Latin or
| existing legal language that is uncommon to the
| layperson.
|
| Of course, this is still in the context of U.S. law and
| the English/Latin language.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Unfortunately it isn't that simple, that only works for
| very basic documents, imagine a 50 A4 page contract
| written that way.
| alexfromapex wrote:
| I had a quiz in middle school where the end of the directions
| said to ignore everything and put down your pencil. Really wish
| all schools taught this.
| nemo44x wrote:
| It's good training for test taking in general. Read every
| question before starting. Then solve the ones you find easy
| first.
|
| Many people are "bad at tests" because they get stuck on
| something, panic, waste all their time and then blow the
| test.
| guitarbill wrote:
| I used to do the opposite, start from the back where the
| bigger/harder questions where when I was still fresh, and
| work backwards(?) to the easier questions with fewer
| points. Agree that leaving a question half finished with
| enough space to come back to it and finish it is also a
| good idea, instead of getting stuck and demoralised.
|
| In any case, I think it's fair to say that reading all of
| the test, thinking about how you want to approach it, and
| not just blindly following the ordering provided is going
| to be better than a naive approach - no matter what
| ordering is chosen.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Indeed - just make sure you read it all first and then
| solve whatever you find most comfortable solving.
|
| For me I found that doing the ones I knew immediately how
| to solve first and then going back to the ones I didn't
| quite get at first made those easier when revisiting. I
| think maybe getting my brain into context made
| referencing that information possible and possibly by
| reading them and moving on, it gave my brain some time to
| begin processing them. No idea though.
|
| Same idea applies to IKEA assembly. Read all the
| directions first.
| WindyLakeReturn wrote:
| I had a similar quiz. I never really liked them because it
| always bothered me why I was expected to follow the last
| instruction first, regardless of what it said. Even if it
| said to ignore the previous instructions, I would only be
| following it once I reached it, which would mean all other
| instructions had been followed. Nothing in the initial rules
| that said to read all instructions gave any indication that
| one should pick and choose which instructions to follow or
| that you should do them in reverse order.
|
| Perhaps this was the moment when I first started the path to
| being a programmer.
| eitland wrote:
| > I never really liked them because it always bothered me
| why I was expected to follow the last instruction first,
| regardless of what it said.
|
| I had a similar one, in fairness it started with something
| along the lines of: "read these instructions completely
| before you start".
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Just out of curiosity, what happened if you declined to sign?
| You flunk out of the course? Reading the TOS is pointless
| anyways, when declining them is very problematic for you.
| II2II wrote:
| I really don't know what would have happened. There was
| nothing worth objecting to, though it was certainly worth
| reading to understand the boundaries while accessing their
| system (i.e. it was for course use). Even if there was
| anything objectionable, the student may have to drop the
| course (rather than flunk it).
|
| Overall, I view blindly signing ToS as the foundation for the
| situation we see today: these agreements exist in cases where
| they probably should not or include terms that are
| increasingly detrimental to the recipient. There is a bit of
| a difference between outlining the rules for accessing a
| service and granting a service the right to sell your data or
| stripping away avenues for legal recourse.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| In university, I was involved in a situation that still
| haunts me. We had a couple Linux servers allocated to our
| multi-year project design team. I ended up as de facto
| systems admin.
|
| One of the younger team members asked me if he could use
| one of the machines to compile homework for another course.
| Given that the machine wasn't critical, I said certainly!
| (Applauding his initiative)
|
| A week later, the department sys admin sends me an email,
| noting our server pegged cpu and men utilization briefly
| and asking if we required additional resources.
|
| I responded, laid out exactly what happened (omitting the
| student's name), thank him for the attention, and tell him
| we don't need anything.
|
| At which point he drops me from the email chain, writes to
| the professor in charge of our group (a guy doing some
| really interesting stuff in AUUVs, and only teaching
| undergrads out of the kindness of his heart), and launches
| into a tirade about students abusing system resources,
| unfair advantages, violations of the honor code, academic
| integrity cases, etc.
|
| After discussing it with my professor, I send the admin an
| email apologizing for the misunderstanding, will make sure
| it won't happen again, and would appreciate if he raised
| concerns with me first next time.
|
| To which professor receives another email about "not
| letting students contact him about faculty matters." My
| prof told me to stop emailing him, which I wisely listened
| to. The student's name was never shared, and no actions
| were taken.
|
| But my takeaway was that kid _almost_ had his academic
| career (and potentially his future) trashed, because
| someone decided to get a bee in their bonnet over an
| interpretation of rules.
|
| ... As a happy ending, I happened to know the BOFH in
| social circles outside of academia (doubt he linked me to
| my school self) and subsequent to this interaction his
| marriage collapsed, he moved to his farm, and eventually
| left university and took up an in depth study of the
| copious and frequent application of alcohol. Couldn 't have
| happened to a nicer guy...
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| > To which professor receives another email about "not
| letting students contact him about faculty matters."
|
| This is the part of the story where I really did a double
| take. This sys admin originally emailed _you_ about cpu
| utilization, right? It 's not like you didn't have their
| email or hadn't been in contact before.
| aflag wrote:
| I don't think reading it is pointless, even if you are very
| likely to accept all but the most draconian of terms. You
| still need to know the rules, otherwise, you may
| inadvertently break them, which could have very harmful
| consequences.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Yeah, too many times you don't get to read the TOS of
| something until after you've already signed up/paid.
|
| I'm sure you could bring up legal action, but everyone knows
| that's cost prohibitive...
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| What you are describing is a contact of adhesion. https://www
| .law.cornell.edu/wex/adhesion_contract_%28contrac...
| Luff wrote:
| Here's a graph showing how long it would take to read the ToS of
| some prominent companies: https://i.redd.it/j6cd57dbrga61.png
| castorp wrote:
| Ages ago I installed a shareware product. And it also had a
| scrollable "terms and condition" screen (about 2 pages long) when
| starting it for the first time. When you clicked the "I Agree"
| button too quickly it would ask you "Do you really agree to the
| terms you read in only 0.76 seconds?"
| dstick wrote:
| That's indeed a fun implementation. Most of my shareware
| memories consist of dark patterns and purple gorillas.
| Moru wrote:
| My favourites are the boxed games that comes with "If you break
| the seal you agree to our terms that you can read inside the
| box" style of agreements. Those are ofcourse not valid though
| so not a problem.
| josefx wrote:
| I have seen a few that forced you to at least scroll down
| before unlocking the accept button or included a thirty second
| countdown to keep you from clicking through.
| rdpintqogeogsaa wrote:
| If there is an acceptance screen anyway, is there a reason not
| to tie this to actually reading the terms? Please consider the
| following idea:
|
| The installer presents the end-user license agreement (EULA).
| Immediately following it, it presents a multiple-choice quiz
| that asks questions about core parts of the EULA, such as
| permissible use, cancellation, refunds,
| jurisdiction/arbitration.
|
| The installer then contains all the files to be installed. They
| are encrypted with a key that is composed of a hash value of
| the correct answers to the above quiz.
|
| In this way, you could tie together whether someone reads the
| EULA with the possibility of performing the installation at
| all. This, in turn, causes successful installation to act as
| implicit proof of having read the terms. The order of the
| values must be randomized to prevent transmission of correct
| answers by index number only.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Let me try translating this into a different scenario:
|
| You are at home, and want to go shopping.
|
| Your door only lets you out if you correctly answer some
| questions about the most recent changes in the law of your
| state.
|
| Are you not a lawyer? Well tough luck, order your groceries
| trough Amazon then..
| phonon wrote:
| "The door refused to open. It said, "Five cents, please."
| He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. "I'll pay
| you tomorrow," he told the door. Again he tried the knob.
| Again it remained locked tight. "What I pay you," he
| informed it, "is in the nature of a gratuity; I don't have
| to pay you." "I think otherwise," the door said. "Look in
| the purchase contract you signed when you bought this
| conapt." In his desk drawer he found the contract; since
| signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the
| document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for
| opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a
| tip. "You discover I'm right," the door said. It sounded
| smug. From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a
| stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to
| unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt's money-gulping door.
| "I'll sue you," the door said as the first screw fell out.
| Joe Chip said, "I've never been sued by a door. But I guess
| I can live through it."
|
| -- Philip K. Dick, Ubik
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| The problem is more that every single piece of software and
| website and such did this and required you actually read it you
| would get nothing done all day but read agreements. I think the
| issue is the very need for all these agreements to begin with,
| we all know almost no one reads them.
|
| I did for a while in the beginning but now its just too much.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Their scored system seems flawed. For example, both Facebook and
| Reddit have the same "E" score, while Facebook requires you to
| disclose your real identity and to link your phone, and Reddit
| doesn't. They are worlds away with regard to privacy.
| herodotus wrote:
| Yes, this is a big problem. In fact, in May 2019, I mad a semi-
| serious post about it (https://notdaily.com/blog/2019/05/05/you-
| are-a-liar-yes-you/)
|
| My major concern is the normalization of lying: the craziness of
| "I have read and accept..." makes liars out of all of us.
|
| So I applaud the tosdr effort, but I don't believe it is
| addressing the real problem.
| absolutelyrad wrote:
| Thought experiment: can we have a standard TOS for centralized
| services?
|
| Building the next Facebook? Legally bind yourself that you'll
| always provide API access and this right cannot ever be taken
| away to the extent permitted by the law.
|
| Maybe we need a standardization for centralized service TOS like
| MIT/GPL etc are for OSS. So people can decide more easily which
| centralized services to use.
| joshka wrote:
| I was thinking something similar the other day, but rather than
| a fully standard TOS, where I get to is that we need standard
| atomic pieces of contracts and TOS docs. For instance in the
| language in the definitions part about who the customer is, who
| the business is should be {common:customer-is-you,
| common:business-is-mybusinessname} or a part that talks about
| not using other customer's login information. Etc. Why should
| we have to read every single line when it's mostly the same?
| DRY the TOS.
| ourmandave wrote:
| Then the second biggest lie is:
|
| _We use cookies to give you the best experience on our website.
| If you continue to use this site we will assume you are happy
| with it. [Ok] [No] [Privacy Policy]_
|
| Actual text from the www.gdpr.eu cookie consent pop-up. =)
| itronitron wrote:
| I always thought "We value your privacy" was the biggest lie on
| the internet.
| Simon_says wrote:
| They value it. Here's how much:
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/11/reddit-users-are-the-
| least-v...
| dest wrote:
| or the most cynical statement
| soylentgraham wrote:
| The biggest confusion I have with the modern web is why these
| cookie agreements never remember that Ive agreed to them
| before.
|
| I wouldn't mind being tracked so much if... they could identify
| that I've agreed to being tracked on the 7 websites I visit
| 1000 times before.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| If this was being handled honestly and straight forwardly
| this would just be a preference set in the browser they
| complied with. Then someone who was never accept could just
| be that way, someone else could always accept and others
| could choose once for each site. But then we had that with
| headers and such and we all know they just ignored it,
| because the entire point is to steal the data as often as
| they can.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| But a lot of people think that it's supposed to be all or
| nothing with cookies (not: required (login cookies) and non
| required (ads)). So if you opt out, people think they're
| not allowed to store a cookie saying you opted out.
| teddyh wrote:
| No, no, no. They _pretend_ to not know this, because they
| want to make it as inconvenient as possible for people
| who click "No".
| gorgoiler wrote:
| If a website knows I didn't _really_ read a contract, can they
| claim I am bound by it?
|
| I like to hope that the _time-spent-reading_ is logged somewhere.
| Should it come up in court, Website.com would be required to
| disclose their logs which would show that I spent all of 1.35s
| reading their terms and conditions, most of which was spent
| scrolling.
|
| Another puerile hack of mine is to sign a document with the name
| "I do not agree" and then press accept, and see if they agreed to
| let me use the service anyway.
| 13415 wrote:
| The best thing to do is to send them by snail mail a printed
| copy of their ToS with the changes highlighted that you'd like
| to suggest, accompanied by a friendly letter stating that they
| are free to send you back their suggestions for further
| negotiation and that no further action on their behalf is
| needed if they accept the suggested changes.
| Engineering-MD wrote:
| But would this hold up in a court?
| zxienin wrote:
| The way website.com will start dealing with that, is to block
| end users to spend legally minimum amount of time on ToS.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Then they will lose users, though.
| zxienin wrote:
| Would've been my thought too. Yet look at what happened to
| EU GDPR cookie rollouts.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Those only take a few seconds. We're talking about at
| _minimum_ a solid five minute blockade--and I would posit
| it really needs to be a couple of hours or more, given
| the length of these agreements.
|
| If a TOS is important enough to a company that they're
| willing to impose a two hour waiting period on customers,
| I'd say that's their prerogative. It would likely be
| effective in getting many users to read the agreements.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| That won't work. The real answer is to make it 100 words or
| less.
| chki wrote:
| This will depend on your specific jurisdiction but just to give
| you an example of the law in Germany (which I expect to be
| similar in other places, especially in Europe where a EU-
| regulation was created on the basis of the German law):
|
| Terms of services ("Allgemeine Geschaftsbedingungen" (AGB)) are
| pre-formulated clauses that one party introduces into the
| contract without giving the other party the possibility to
| object to or at least negotiate these clauses.
|
| The ToS are part of your legal contract with the other party,
| regardless of whether you read them. One example of ToS could
| also be the house rules in your local gym, which possibly
| weren't even handed out to you but instead they are up on a
| wall somewhere near the front desk. The important thing is that
| you need to have the _possibility_ to read them (if you are
| blind they will need to make sure there is a workaround).
| Depending on the circumstances the obligation to make sure that
| you are aware of the ToS can be more strict.
|
| The important caveat to using terms of services as a company is
| a strict content control. SS 307-309 of the german civil law
| define certain things that you cannot possibly put in your ToS.
| And if a company still does it, a Court will not try to
| interpret the rule in a favorable way for them, they will
| strike it out completely. (no "geltungserhaltende Reduktion")
|
| Examples of content control include that when buying something
| it is impossible to sign away (some of) your rights as a
| consumer for a faulty product. But there are also some "catch-
| all" clauses in there that will check whether parts of the ToS
| placed an unfair burden on you as a consumer.
|
| ToS can also be void if they are unclearly written.
|
| Edit: Signing with "I do not agree" is an interesting approach
| and sometimes these "hacks" can actually work in Court. That
| being said, it would probably not hold up. Pressing on "accept"
| is not somehow invalid just because you said so somewhere else.
|
| Off topic but an interesting example of a similar hack is this
| case of a man changing a pre formulated contract with his bank
| which they send to him first and then signed it when he had
| send it back to him.
| https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2013/08/14/man-who-outwitted-...
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Thank you. This was fascinating.
|
| Re: _I do not agree_ : the only way my sophomoric _hack_
| might ever actually work would be if I argued that clearly
| the website's didn't bother reading my contract response --
| if they had they would have correctly interpreted my actions
| as meaning I didn't agree to the terms.
|
| But then I went ahead and used the site anyway. Someone who
| didn't agree to the terms would never do such a thing. It is
| a very silly idea of mine.
| hundchenkatze wrote:
| Here's a case between Uber and a blind person [0].
|
| TLDR:
|
| - Someone is suing Uber for discrimination because drivers
| didn't allow the person's guide dog in the car.
|
| - Uber's terms state users can't sue Uber and must go through
| Uber's arbitration process
|
| - Uber's terms were presented in the "By continuing you agree
| to these terms" fashion
|
| - Person claimed they never agreed to arbitration and that they
| should be allowed to sue Uber, and a state court agreed
|
| > But the broader impact of the ruling is to put companies on
| notice that they can't bind users to restrictive terms merely
| by linking to those terms somewhere in a site or app's
| registration process. In order to create a legally binding
| contract, a tech company has actually put the terms in front of
| the user and get them to affirmatively agree to them.
|
| [0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/court-says-
| uber-...
| stunt wrote:
| Yes, as long as they make it a required step. It's your fault
| if you choose to not read it.
| [deleted]
| nerdponx wrote:
| I am curious if there is any legal doctrine on this in any
| part of the world.
| 13415 wrote:
| In most EU countries ToS are pretty much void anyway
| because they tend to contain frivolous or illegal clauses.
| For example, a ToS is void in the EU that limits the
| consumer's rights for legal action in any way.
|
| Here is a list of unfair contract terms that will likely
| cause an EULA or ToS to have no legal binding at all:
|
| https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-
| treat...
| wolco5 wrote:
| You could skip steps on some systems, put in null values,
| click yes get the next link and remove approval.
|
| There is no legal requirement you agree to use the service.
| The system may prevent access but that's not a legal
| requirement.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| I don't think time spent would matter if someone took the
| deliberate action of clicking "Accept." It's like arguing that
| you didn't read a contract before you signed. You still signed.
|
| I'm not arguing in favor of TOS. I just don't buy this.
|
| The "I do not agree," method reminds me of the tactics of
| "sovereign citizens." They try to game things via highly
| specific language. People think they can loophole the system,
| but still get snared. SCs still go to jail.
| salawat wrote:
| actually, this is a great detriment to every form of
| established contract law as we've trivialized what it means
| to establish a legal contract. Easy com, easy go.
|
| A contract requires consideration, and a meeting of the
| minds. If you can't even request a change to the terms for
| your agreement, it isn't a spiritually valid contract. It's
| the difference between actually being prepared to negotiate,
| and making an ultimatum. ToS's are often presented in the
| forms of ultimatum's with no alternatives. That I do not
| accept.
| rusk wrote:
| > You still signed
|
| Prove it was me that signed. Prove it was me that clicked
| accept.
| aflag wrote:
| In order to access the service you need to register. The
| registration form would not allow you to register without
| accepting it. They only need to prove that you indeed
| access the service. That doesn't seem too hard to prove for
| most services out there, or at least the most popular ones.
| hansvm wrote:
| It's not really that cut and dry.
|
| - They need to prove that "you" accessed the service, not
| somebody claiming to be you, somebody with the same full
| name and rough location as you, etc.
|
| - Websites are often pretty bad at actually requiring ToS
| acceptance to register. The fact that you've accessed the
| service doesn't necessarily imply you've accepted
| anything.
|
| - Even if registration is ironclad, accessing the service
| won't prove you agreed to any particular version of the
| ToS. The ever popular amend-at-will clauses never hold up
| in court, so you really do need to know which version was
| agreed to.
|
| - ToS are often presented coercively. Maybe you've
| already signed a lease and moved in, but to actually pay
| your rent you need to accept an additional one or more
| third-party ToS because the landlord doesn't accept cash
| or checks. Maybe you've already paid for your vehicle
| registration, and after the cash is removed from your
| account you're presented with additional terms that need
| to be agreed to in order to receive your tags. Even if
| you've agreed to some specific contract, that kind of
| coercion can invalidate the additional terms, even though
| the party whose ToS you agreed to might not have known
| about the coercion.
| icedchai wrote:
| I think you missed the point. They can't prove it was
| _him_ actually filling out the registration form, only
| someone from some IP address at a specific time. They can
| 't prove the person who logs in using that registered
| username/password is the same one that accepted the TOS.
|
| ToSes are mostly useless. They generally contain a line
| that indicates the terms can change at any time and you
| accept them by continuing to use the service.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| My take is that if one party to a contract does not have a
| _reasonable_ expectation that the contract was read by the
| other party, the contract should be invalid.
|
| People need to know what they're signing. Imagine if a
| celebrity was signing a bunch of autographs for fans, and
| someone surreptitiously stuck a contract under their hand. We
| can agree that wouldn't be valid, right?
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| You deliberately chose not to read it. Why should you then
| be allowed to use the service AND claim not being bound by
| the terms?
|
| (And yes, I think german law has the right principle there:
| clauses which are "unexpected" to an average consumer are
| invalid with consumers (different in B2B context), thus
| risk as consumer is low when blindly accepting)
| WindyLakeReturn wrote:
| >Why should you then be allowed to use the service AND
| claim not being bound by the terms?
|
| It is like a child signing a contract. The child isn't
| bound to it, but the other party is. In this case, a
| corporation attempted to use an extreme disparity in
| knowledge and power to take advantage of a much weaker
| party. The disparity is larger than that between an
| average adult and an average child. As a consequence of
| this, it seems just as fair as in the case of contracts
| signed by children.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| The Child is assumed to be unable to sign a legal
| contract.
|
| You are able and chose not to. (Unless maybe you have a
| mental disability and then some caretaker)
| bigwavedave wrote:
| >It's like a child signing a contract.
|
| I don't know if I'd go that far. There's a whole class of
| laws around protecting children (two quick examples here
| in the US: age of consent; being tried as a minor vs
| tried as an adult) because the reality is that, in
| general, children are easier than adults to exploit. I
| mean, I convinced my nephew over the holiday that eating
| all his broccoli was like doing extra credit for Santa
| Claus, so it would cancel out the naughty action of
| eating one of the cookies he put out for Santa.
|
| Saying that an adult agreeing to an unread ToS is
| unenforceable because we don't hold children accountable
| for signed contracts is plain nonsense.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Serious contracts are witnessed or, better, notarised.
| These witnesses attest to the good faith involved in the
| signing ceremony.
|
| Accept button clicking is not witnessed. Any contract so-
| signed should be good for all of $10 worth of dispute. No
| more.
| clairity wrote:
| time spent doesn't work because it's only loosely correlated
| to the actual behavior they're trying to track, which is to
| read the tos. reading is not even perfectly correlated with
| understanding the tos, which is what we're really after.
|
| this type of mistaken logic (loose correlations taken as
| tight ones) is everywhere. it's so common to look for
| secondary characteristics that can stand in for the desired
| one. and that's often how we get unintended consequences.
| scotty79 wrote:
| I often don't even read what's written on the button? Am I
| lefally accepting something even if I'm just cliking buttons
| randomly to make anything useful happen in your app?
| mmcconnell1618 wrote:
| If you randomly clicked the accept button before you
| realized that is was asking you to agree to TOS, can you
| get back to the terms? I just realized that 99% of the
| sites that have TOS do not send me a copy of what I just
| agreed to or have anyway to get back to that screen. In
| most other circumstances, both sides of the agreement
| receive a signed copy for their records.
| wittyreference wrote:
| Actually signing a contract doesn't begin and end at a
| signature. It requires a meeting of the minds, which the
| signature is meant to represent. A contract without a meeting
| of the minds - such as a contract presented in a context
| coercing the counterparty not to have an attorney parse it
| for them - is invalid, signature or no.
| mkl95 wrote:
| It should be fairly easy to do this with something like Hotjar.
| Although I'm not sure if it is legally feasible to do it
| without the user's consent, especially in Europe.
| tmikaeld wrote:
| You'd just have to agree to the agreement to be tracked
| first.
|
| Though, GDPR stipulates that if it's a legal requirement for
| the service to work (which is the case) then it's not
| required to log visitor approval.
| vntok wrote:
| For those reading, be aware that while signing "I do not agree"
| is borderline fraudulent, at least it's not clear user
| impersonation ie identity theft.
|
| There are people who do similar things but sign "Daffy Duck" or
| even "Barack Obama". Someday they'll be in for a surprise
| visit.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Moreover: signing as "do not agree" and then _using the
| service anyway_ is about as clear-cut as an abuse-of-service
| can be.
|
| Aka "wire fraud", if you're a DA.
| wolco5 wrote:
| Not true at all. No one is coming for a visit ever.
|
| You could be known as Daffy Duck or Obama or call yourself
| that. There is no legal requirement to use a legal name.
|
| What sites do if a legal name is required is to require a
| credit card and get the info from there.
|
| Clicking,I do not agree is not borderline fraud. Turning off
| javascript and not getting a tos prompt is not fraud either.
| aflag wrote:
| I think disabling javascript could be considered hacking
| the software.
| hansvm wrote:
| Intent might matter a little. I wouldn't be surprised if
| disabling JS for the purpose of bypassing an access
| control falls afoul of the CFAA but intentionally
| browsing the web without JS (e.g. via lynx) does not. If
| that were the case, they'd have to prove that you
| intentionally circumvented their access controls.
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| This is why they're non enforceable in a real court. If I put
| the rights to your inheritance in a tos no judge is actually
| going to enforce that, because no one would reasonably sign
| that away for access to a website.
|
| In reality only things which you would reasonably expect to be
| in a tos or privacy policy could be enforced, given 99% of
| users don't read them, or understand them.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| That sounds like how you wish the works worked vs how it
| does. Are you aware of a single court case where a judge
| dismissed it on those grounds?
| still_grokking wrote:
| I don't know about US law but at least in Germany it's
| really like pointed out.
|
| There is a law governing TOS terms, and it says among other
| things that the TOS can't contain unexpected und unrelated
| terms.
|
| So if you write for example into the TOS governing your
| website something like that every visitor owes you 1000
| bucks that won't be enforceable.
|
| The TOS related legislation is nothing new. It was there
| already in the analog age to prevent companies form
| tricking people into signing inappropriate contracts.
| nikanj wrote:
| Luckily they don't end up in real courts, because
| corporations go for mandatory arbitration nowadays.
| khuzudin wrote:
| This article is about a plug-in that recognizes TOS agreements
| and summarizes them for you. I've often wondered if it's
| feasible to create a plug-in that recognizes TOS agreements and
| _clicks the Accept button_ for you.
|
| It should also make a record showing that you never saw the
| agreement and did not click the button. Maybe it could
| aggregate these records to show that for a given website there
| are thousands of users who have never seen the TOS.
|
| Given that most people seem to think these click-through
| agreements are already pretty weak from a legal standpoint, I
| wonder how much more it would take to make them completely
| worthless.
| Vinnl wrote:
| The team recently did an AMA on reddit:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/kogsuw/we_are_term...
| novok wrote:
| I think the compromise to TOS type things is they can only be
| limited to a list of house rules that you can enforce with or
| without an agreement, kind of like booting off a rowdy customer
| off of the property of your retail store. Like, 'here are the
| rules' and that is about it.
| pitspotter wrote:
| I frequently get mails from banks and other service providers
| with subject lines like 'changes to our agreement'. I don't read
| those either. Mind you, it might be fun to send a few unilateral
| changes back their way, detailed in a suitably upbeat or
| condescending letter.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| A few contracts I have done in the past I got the terms through
| and had serious issues with so just ended up blacking out and
| initially it or adding in an appendix. I don't think I have
| ever seen a company say a thing about a unilateral change to
| the contract I just made without negotiation, they like most
| simply people sign it and accept it without reading it.
| eesmith wrote:
| One one contract I asked for some changes. The company said
| that they've dealt with hundreds of companies who agreed with
| the contract and didn't see why it should change.
|
| I pointed out that the contract had several places where it
| referred to other documents I must agree to, referenced by
| URL, and the linked-to documents didn't exist.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| I have seen contracts that made the work I was meant to do
| for them impossible, that type of work wasn't allowed under
| the contract.
|
| The classic example is a company wanting me to work on some
| open source software and potentially put in patches on it
| but having a clause in their contract that assigns all
| rights to the software I produce to them.
|
| They don't often read them themselves to see if they are
| sensible or correct before sending them. The entire
| situation is really dumb, no one anywhere in the process
| seems to read them.
| stunt wrote:
| I think we need some universal standards for ToS. The same way we
| have some visual rating signs for movies and video games. Most of
| it should be regular and easy to categories. And there should be
| a separate rating for how many irregular terms are in there.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Yes, this is great. Similar to how app permissions work on iOs.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Yeah let the lawyers argue over what the pictures mean and let
| us normals just have little pictures.
| 1ncorrect wrote:
| I've been chewing on an idea for a while around
| programmatically handling license agreements, basically each
| clause is checked atomically, with flow logic as necessary. You
| could have a personal profile, possibly multiple, of things
| you've decided to accept or reject beforehand, and the
| anomalous clauses would be presented as a list to review.
| Providers would have an incentive to reduce the friction by
| limiting scope to what's actually required, not just what they
| want.
|
| With wide enough support, a couple of benefits would be
| nefarious and malicious components would get highlighted
| quickly, and it could serve as a feedback channel from
| consumers to suppliers on why an agreement was rejected.
|
| Ultimately, the power dynamic needs to be recalibrated.
| byecomputer wrote:
| So the idea is a form with a checklist?
| 1ncorrect wrote:
| That's one major function it would provide if clauses were
| included which weren't covered by the pre-populated
| profile.
|
| A core component would be standardising clauses so they
| could be handled individually and automatically. If you've
| already answered the clause, and the parameters (time
| spans, quantities) were within the range you'd set, it
| would be 'green' and could be hidden. Clauses which you had
| answered but are outside your criteria would be 'amber',
| and unanswered clauses would be 'red'. As you process more
| agreements, your can save answers to your profile so the
| process becomes more optimised over time.
| avel wrote:
| We tried that for Privacy Policies with P3P
| (https://www.w3.org/P3P/) and we failed.
| rusk wrote:
| Did it fail on its own or was it helped that way? I can't
| imagine any of the big players that drive a lot of the
| standardisation would be too keen on this ...
| dsukhin wrote:
| This is fascinating, I didn't realize there was a spec for
| this for the web.
|
| But this begs the question: Apple Privacy Labels "caught on"
| because Apple has unilateral control to enforce them in the
| App Store. If ostensibly the same idea for the WWW did not
| catch on, is the problem (1) the lack of enforcement/economic
| incentive mechanisms on the _decentralized_ web or (2) that
| consumers really didn 't care/know enough to create/enforce
| such free market incentives?
| rusk wrote:
| I would say both, and a bit more besides. I would say that
| the big players are _actively_ disincentivized from
| supporting something like this.
| albertgoeswoof wrote:
| A centralised service that tracks all your tos agreements and
| changes would also be great. It would make things easier for
| developers as wel
| Daho0n wrote:
| >Yep, we use cookies as well and we have to show it to you as we
| are based in Germany, sorry folks!
|
| Following one law and breaking another by not having a No button
| (only a link to duckduckgo.com under "get my out of here"). Not
| sure I trust someone to explain me Terms if they don't understand
| it themselves.
| JustinBack wrote:
| Sorry for the confusion, the cookie notice was a fast
| implementation. Now, cookies will only be stored once you click
| the accept button. "No" will hide it for the on the current
| page.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Educational settings are one of the worst places where insidious
| terms crop up. You often simply don't have a choice.
|
| I'm a volunteer firefighter and was registered by my department
| to take a course with a government-run institution to upgrade my
| certification.
|
| A while back that institution began using Blackboard - a
| Netherlands company - for all learning materials, whose ToS [1]
| includes a clause where I must agree to _defend and indemnify_
| Blackboard _from and against any and all claims, damages,
| obligations, losses, liabilities, costs or debt, and expenses
| (including but not limited to attorney 's fees) arising from_ my
| _use of and access to_ their product, as well as _any other party
| 's access and use_ of the product with my username or password
| (which I contemplate could occur if Blackboard or the institution
| were to suffer a data breach).
|
| To read the textbook (only available online) there was a similar
| ToS from yet another third party. You can't access any of the
| material without explicitly agreeing to both contracts.
|
| I was uncomfortable with the clause. For one, I didn't understand
| why my interaction with my local government institution required
| me to indemnify two foreign companies with whom I have zero
| relation (and didn't want any). Before "cloud services", the
| institution would have contracted with the vendors themselves to
| buy the platform, then presented their _own_ contract to me
| (which is the right way to do this, and which I 'd be fine with).
|
| I deferred accepting, and reached out to the institution to find
| out if there was some alternative way to obtain the materials
| (e.g. in hardcopy). I spent months trying to find alternative
| arrangements, but the bottom line was nobody cared.
|
| I showed it to a commercial lawyer in the department who agreed
| the clause is nonsensical and he expressed some choice words for
| the institution foisting this upon its students.
|
| I give of my own time and volition do firefighting and rescue
| (and love doing so!). Nobody was paying me to take this course.
|
| In the end I wound up hitting the Accept button, with a deep
| feeling of having effectively been bullied into it.
|
| Compared to some of the other ToS's I've seen out there this one
| was comparatively mild. I can only imagine how parents must feel
| when such garbage finds its way into their kids' learning
| environments.
|
| [1] https://help.blackboard.com/Terms_of_Use and
| https://tosdr.org/en/service/2230
| [deleted]
| forgingahead wrote:
| It's all farcical, but it's pervasive because of the lawyers I
| guess. Even a supposedly design-first-consumer-friendly company
| like Apple has walls of tiny text to scroll through.
|
| If only Terms of Services could be upgraded to:
|
| 1. A simple, plain English/local language explanation in bullet
| points of what the software will be doing. Like how you would
| explain it to your parents.
|
| 2. A link to the legalese, so that covers the legal requirements?
|
| If I recall correctly, Stripe is one company whereby the Terms of
| Service tries to explain things to you clearly. That's certainly
| a start, but this would be an interesting thing to improve on and
| solve. Maybe a GPT-2/GPT-3 application? Tell me simply what this
| block of text means?
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| The problem is the entire point is to hide all the nefarious
| things they can do with your data. Plenty of open source
| software has really straight forward agreements based on common
| terms but they can do that because they aren't working out
| scary ways to utilise your data to make money from you.
| lcall wrote:
| Yes, like we do with Creative Commons or FLOSS licenses, so you
| don't have any reason to read them more than once or
| occasionally. Whether somebody. Maybe something like the
| uniform commercial code, in the USA. That would be a nice
| contribution by some organization.
|
| Even if only some sections are standardized and others not,
| that would be a comparative win. Maybe an
| "exceptions/additions" part.
|
| Edit: also, there are some few sites I recall that summarized
| terms and/or pointed out problematic parts, to help someone who
| cared but didn't want to read them all. I might be able to hunt
| up (a) link(s) if desired.
|
| What I do currently is read them once, mentally note the date
| displayed, save them, and when they change, use a short script
| to make it easy to see differences (uses fmt to make lines to
| shorter first, and get sometimes fewer differences that way).
| Sometimes I have pushed back and contacted the organization, or
| just not used them. I wrote a bunch of complaints about this
| kind of thing, at my site -- it takes us further down the
| slippery slope of saying things we don't mean to each other,
| habitually, which is sadly dishonest IMO.
| josefx wrote:
| > Even a supposedly design-first-consumer-friendly company like
| Apple
|
| The company that actively misled consumers about the EU wide
| minimum two year warranty, sold it separately as extended
| warranty and finally placed the court mandated correction on
| its home page just a bit out of sight.
|
| If so called "consumer friendly" companies had to write a
| honest guide to social interactions it would start of with a
| chapter on the benefits of rape and pillaging.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| I remember reading my bank's ToS at the time I was just out of
| the school. I read the whole piece, printed in font size 4 and
| the conclusion was like this: no matter what happens, it's my
| fault.
|
| It doesn't matter what the TOCs are if they are presented at a
| gun point: a lot of services don't have alternatives and as much
| as I wouldn't cry for losing access to Reddit or YouTube,for some
| that would be the case.
| [deleted]
| tomgs wrote:
| Sidenote: This is how you properly deal with massive load on your
| site: https://imgur.com/a/zKMh5zg
|
| The "checkout our twitter" thing is especially cool.
| Uninen wrote:
| Are there any examples of minimal human-friendly Terms Of Service
| texts that one could use or adopt to their own projects?
| noname120 wrote:
| Previous discussions:
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15031020 (2017)
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9678357 (2015)
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8394144 (2014)
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5888393 (2013)
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4350907 (2012)
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