Troubling Terms of Service
One of the areas where I had the least patience as a child was how long programs took to install on our family computer. I’d sit for hours watching the bar ever so slowly advance and papers fly across the window, just so I could play a game as soon as possible. This impatience was exacerbated by how mother insisted on pouring through the terms of service whenever it popped up, even going back and re-reading parts.
I was mostly confused on what she would do if she didn’t like what she read, just not install the program that she or I needed for work and school? Little did I know issues with these agreements would only increase as I got older and technology advanced.
The question brought up by Vedantam in “Do You Read Terms Of Service Contracts?” on if agreeing to terms of service really counts as informed consent is interesting. Some websites attempt to translate the legalese, such as Tumblr which adds little comments with analogies to Benedict Cumberbatch. Some also add a bit of humorous situations like how Amazon’s covers cases of zombie apocalypse.
Most companies don’t do anything to ease the reading, likely taking advantage of the bland legal style and confusion so users don’t know what they’re signing up for. The contradictory nature of them can also be tricky, such as Discord who says they won’t sell your personal data, but if they face bankruptcy or a similar situation they can give their user data to another company.
Back then as a kid I couldn’t understand reading all that nonsense, but now I’m glad my mother did.
