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Comment by rectang | Hacker News Reader

> What semi-decent human being inside Uber came up with this?

Susan Fowler advocated for ending forced arbitration as the "the single most important thing a company can do to prove to its employees that it is dedicated to acting ethically, legally, responsibly, and transparently":

https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/5/20/five-things-tech...

No-forced-arbitration should be the norm.

What other companies have the worst forced arbitration clauses?

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> No-forced-arbitration should be the norm.

I'd go further to say that forced arbitration should be illegal/unenforceable without clear evidence informed affirmative consent, and that the offering of services cannot be made conditional on accepting it.

I think a lot of the consent concepts pioneered in the GDPR could be reasonably applied to many consumer-unfriendly practices.

We have a lot of that in finance, like when you get a mortgage -- you have to sign a bunch of separate documents, one for each major concession. Informed consent may help, but it won't solve the root problem of "selling your fundamental rights", which some consider "unconscionable" (legal term for an agreement that is barred by law even if both parties claim they agree to it)

One of the key provisions of the GDPR is that the provider cannot shut you out of the service if you don't give consent, unless the data is vital to the operation of the feature. And needing to use the data for targeted advertising doesn't count.

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