[HN Gopher] Do not accept terms and conditions
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       Do not accept terms and conditions
        
       Author : halflife
       Score  : 60 points
       Date   : 2025-10-17 19:32 UTC (4 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.termsandconditions.game)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.termsandconditions.game)
        
       | zahlman wrote:
       | > You need to enable JavaScript to play.
       | 
       | I didn't enable JavaScript. Does that mean I win?
        
         | brudgers wrote:
         | Yes. You won the whole internet.
        
         | technothrasher wrote:
         | WOPR would be proud.
        
       | frenchmajesty wrote:
       | I get a Heroku error trying to view the site.
        
         | gowld wrote:
         | According to its terms and conditions, Heroku is not Web Scale.
        
           | SCUSKU wrote:
           | Have they tried MongoDB?
        
         | johnsillings wrote:
         | same
        
         | eric-p7 wrote:
         | That means you won the game.
        
           | purplelemons wrote:
           | damn, I just lost The Game.
        
       | RhysU wrote:
       | The Sequel: Decline e-Delivery.
        
         | ratelimitsteve wrote:
         | T&C 3: Block Notifications
        
       | DeepYogurt wrote:
       | Damn. I lost it.
        
         | JKCalhoun wrote:
         | Yep, I just lost the game as well.
        
       | ratelimitsteve wrote:
       | HN hug of death?
        
       | isoprophlex wrote:
       | Their heroku setup is having a moment. But if this is about the
       | game I've been playing with my rude ass car that started nagging
       | me about Kia's t&c update, weeks after i first got it, every time
       | i start the engine...
       | 
       | I'm not sure if I'm winning and I'm not sure if the game is fun
       | anymore. at least the car and I have been playing a single game
       | of me declining the t&c and please ask me again later for some
       | three years and a few months now. So the replay value is high.
       | 
       | Also sometimes my wife pretends to go for the "accept" button and
       | it makes me all hot and bothered
        
         | fainpul wrote:
         | This game seems to be all the rage right now. I've seen clones
         | of it everywhere.
        
         | Etheryte wrote:
         | If you're in Europe, then most new cars do that right now.
         | There was an EU-wide court case some time ago whether tracking
         | consent can be one-and-done in a car or not because different
         | people can be driving a car at different times, if memory
         | serves well. Rather than simply drop the tracking, the car
         | manufacturers decided to just nag you every time. This is now
         | the first thing on my list when looking for a new car, if they
         | do stuff like that I'm not buying.
        
           | twelvedogs wrote:
           | I backed into my garage wall after being distracted by one of
           | those things, now I just leave it up
        
         | agile-gift0262 wrote:
         | My Toyota also got that game in a DLC about a year after I
         | bought it
        
           | isoprophlex wrote:
           | Mozilla did an expose a while back on what's hidden in those
           | terms, IIRC. Things like "we want to know do you use the
           | heated seats" (okay... useful free market research maybe) but
           | also "we store personality profiles including your sexual
           | preferences"
           | 
           | Somewhere I hope a PM is deliberating the intricacies of
           | automotive teledildonics. I hope.
        
       | 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
       | Broken for me, but going off of the headline, I have been playing
       | the same game with Apple Health. Refuse to accept what probably
       | gives them some wiggle room to monetize my health information.
       | Which also means that I cannot setup a wake up alarm, only
       | generic alarms.
        
         | arkadiyt wrote:
         | Apple Health data is end-to-end encrypted, even without using
         | ADP. They don't have access to it:
         | https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651
        
           | 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
           | That is cute, but if big tech goes out of its way to get
           | specific permissions to do something, I am going to assume it
           | is not in my best interests.
           | 
           | Sure, Apple is less bad than many others, but that does not
           | mean they are trustworthy.
        
             | midtake wrote:
             | I assumed it was to update your sleep stats in health.
        
       | geminiboy wrote:
       | Shameless Plug
       | 
       | I created this web application to review the terms and conditions
       | of website and show an LLM surface the ugly parts of the TOS.
       | 
       | tosreview.org/
       | 
       | Shoutout: this was inspired by the amazing humans at tosdr.org
        
         | coffeecoders wrote:
         | Your site gives me ssl error.
        
         | chathaway123 wrote:
         | Just wanted to say thank you. It prompted a review of our own
         | T&Cs.
        
       | topkai22 wrote:
       | For mandatory T&Cs I'll put in the signature box "Decline",
       | including updating the HTML page to say "decline" instead of "OK"
       | and screenshotting it or modifying the HTTP response sent back to
       | include riders.
       | 
       | I know it probably won't matter, but it's kind of fun for me.
        
         | odie5533 wrote:
         | No chance that would hold up in court. Clickwraps have been
         | tested in courts and are fully enforceable.
        
           | wat10000 wrote:
           | And keep in mind that (at least in the US) the opposite of "I
           | accept the terms and conditions" is not "I get to do whatever
           | I want," it's "I am accessing this service without
           | authorization, which is a crime under the Computer Fraud and
           | Abuse Act."
        
             | NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
             | If I'm on the jury, I'll make sure he walks.
             | 
             | The only valid agreements require the party seeking the
             | agreement to make efforts in that pursuit. Did a human view
             | the signed agreement afterward? Do they store that signed
             | agreement in such a way as to be able to retrieve it if
             | they need to contest the terms later?
             | 
             | Then no agreement was made.
             | 
             | And as for the CFAA provisions, if they put those resources
             | on the public internet, then the public has the right to
             | interact with them. You can't fence off the sidewalk and
             | claim that someone trespasses when they walk on it.
        
               | pbasista wrote:
               | > You can't fence off the sidewalk and claim that someone
               | trespasses when they walk on it.
               | 
               | Perhaps a better analogy would be:
               | 
               | If you go out into a public space, you have to accept
               | that by doing so you lose a certain portion of your
               | privacy. You cannot expect that other people will agree
               | to your "terms and conditions" before being allowed to
               | talk to you. They will just talk to you if they so like.
        
               | heavyset_go wrote:
               | > _If I 'm on the jury, I'll make sure he walks._
               | 
               | If you're going to be on a jury, don't post things like
               | this on the internet, even if I agree with you.
        
               | wat10000 wrote:
               | It's not like fencing off part of the sidewalk. It's like
               | having a building next to that sidewalk with a door. The
               | fact that the door is easily accessible doesn't mean
               | everyone is welcome to come in. If the door is open
               | that's generally how it is. If it's locked, even badly,
               | entering would be trespassing. If it's locked with a
               | button that unlocks it, and the button says "by pushing
               | this button you agree to the following terms," well,
               | that's hard to say.
        
             | pbasista wrote:
             | Are you implying that if a US "service" consists of e.g.
             | publicly accessible HTTP endpoints, it is illegal to use
             | these endpoints in the US without "accepting" some terms
             | and conditions that the provider of these endpoints
             | requires its users to accept before using them?
             | 
             | I do not understand how such a requirement would be legally
             | enforceable for _public_ endpoints.
        
               | ralph84 wrote:
               | Yes of course. Ask weev how the "it was publicly
               | accessible" defense worked out.
        
               | delichon wrote:
               | Simply violating a TOS is not a federal crime, as long as
               | it doesn't circumvent a technical barrier like a
               | subscription wall. This is a new SCOTUS interpretation of
               | the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act as of 2021, in Van Buren
               | v. United States.
        
               | heavyset_go wrote:
               | How much money, time and freedom to waste do you have to
               | fight and then appeal this from jail then prison?
        
               | wat10000 wrote:
               | You can reasonably assume that if no terms and conditions
               | were offered, then your use of a publicly accessible
               | endpoint is authorized.
               | 
               | But if terms and conditions ARE offered to you, and you
               | bypass acceptance somehow, then you're knowingly
               | accessing the system without being authorized.
               | 
               | I really doubt this would be prosecuted except as part of
               | some much larger misbehavior, but it is there.
        
           | moritzwarhier wrote:
           | I envy the rigor and time investment, but I'm inclined to
           | agree: there are unenforceable contracts, but I'm not aware
           | of any case in which denying t&c's while using a service
           | deliberately was successfully defended as compatible?
           | 
           | I'm not a lawyer though, I'm not even that well-informed
           | about everyday law stuff for laymen.
        
           | fsckboy wrote:
           | > _No chance that would hold up in court. Clickwraps have
           | been tested in courts and are fully enforceable._
           | 
           | there may be no chance it would hold up in court, but not for
           | the reason you say. it would have be be because "any words on
           | on a modified document "signature" line would be taken as a
           | signature" or "subverting a clickwrap license is theft of
           | services" or whatever.
           | 
           | that "agreed" clickwrap licenses have been found enforceable
           | is a separate fact about a separate issue.
        
       | paulddraper wrote:
       | > An error occurred in the application and your page could not be
       | served. If you are the application owner, check your logs for
       | details. You can do this from the Heroku CLI with the command
       | heroku logs --tail
        
       | lazycouchpotato wrote:
       | Site's borked, but for those that were able to access it, is it
       | like Ente's https://consent.gg/ ?
        
         | fph wrote:
         | Note to everyone: disable your adblocker when visiting that
         | website, or you'll see only an empty page with a countdown.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | what happens at the end of the countdown?
        
       | vintermann wrote:
       | The app is erroring out for me, but I have a suspicion it's a
       | "Neal-like"?
        
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       (page generated 2025-10-21 23:01 UTC)