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Most Online 'Terms of Service' Are Incomprehensible To Adults, Study Finds (vice.com)
Two law professors analyzed the sign-in terms and conditions of 500 popular US websites, including Google and Facebook, and found that more than 99 percent of them were "unreadable," far exceeding the level most American adults read at, but are still enforced. From a report: According to a new paper published on SSRN (Social Science Research Network), the average readability level of the agreements reviewed by the researchers was comparable to articles in academic journals. "While consumers are legally expected or presumed to read their contracts, businesses are not required to write readable ones. This asymmetry -- and its potential consequences -- puzzled us," wrote co-author Samuel Becher, a law professor at Victoria University of Wellington, in an email to Motherboard.
This is the same thing the finance industry did with loans and credit cards. They wrote up 20 pages of tiny, tiny print, written at a college graduate level, and got away with stealing from people for years.
Then Elizabeth Warren got the CFPB created and the government required credit forms to be clear, with details about what you owe and how much it costs you.
We need this with tech.
Government isn't always the answer, but government is our protection from corporations who only care about shareholder value and not you, your family, or in some cases, your life.
Back in the 1990s, I got my first credit card. The first few times I had to sign the slip, I noticed it said I agreed to some cardholder agreement and then some other agreement. I thought "What's in that agreement?" Everybody thought I was crazy for even caring.
We failed to stop this train long ago. You implicitly agree to contracts when you buy a pack of bubble gum from a store, open an app, or make a phone call. It's too much.
We recently saw an article about a reported who tried to go without Amazon, Google, or Facebook for a week. How about trying to go a week without implicitly signing a contract? You would probably starve to death.