Comment by BiteCode_dev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by BiteCode_dev | Hacker News Reader

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Amazon kindle TOS take 9 hours to read: https://inshorts.com/en/news/man-takes-9-hours-to-read-amazo....

That's if you understand it entirely, including the legalese, on the first read. That's for the kindle only, not for amazon the website, nor alexa or prime.

I accepted 3 TOS last week, as a dev, it's almost part of my job description, but let's focus on normal people and say they don't accept TOS for Github, FIGMA or AWS, but only for stuff like youtube, gmail, msoffice, whatsapp, instagram, etc.

Let's be _very_ optimistic and say you have 20 TOS (excluding IRL contracts such as the bank, insurance, etc) forced on you every year by services: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla, Telegram, Facebook all have different TOS for difference services.

Then you have the TOS updates, that don't come as a diff of the previous one, but as a haystack with the changes as needles. So let's say 10 more to read, again.

Let's average reading time to 5 hours (I'm being very generous), and assume you understand the implications (at this point, it's not generosity, it's abnegation). That's 30 * 5, or 150 hours, that you are supposed to spend each year on reading those ? What do you do, take 3 weeks of vacation just for that ? Also don't forget to sleep, eat healthy, exercise, educate yourself, and socialize.

I hope you don't have a full time job or kids.

And what if, after reading the ToS, they object to some clause? Their only recourse is not using the service. Object to more than a handful, and soon your only option is living in a cave.

That, or push for legislation that limits what may be put into contracts, clickthrough or others. But since contracts are sacrosanct, and the highest purpose of society and the law is enforcing them, that option is off the table.

Even if you hire a lawyer to review that ToS, that would be a waste of time because every ToS has a clause "we can change the terms any time we want for any reason we want and it's your responsibility to read the new terms on our website". Most ToSes also refer to "additional terms" written elsewhere.

Then don’t use the services. I wouldn’t sign a contract without reading it. “Your honour, I had no time to read the contract, therefore it’s void” seems a bad excuse.

Or society can just treat shitty ToS clauses as invalid because the good of the individual is far more important than being fair to powerful ultra corporations.

So, don't use the internet, a smartphone or a laptop.

Because there is a TOS or CLUE coming with Android, iOS, Windows, MacOS, Firefox, Chrome, Edge...

I'm assuming you didn't even read the TOS/CLUE required for you to post this comment.

Don't shop online, at all.

And I'm assuming you do, and didn't spend hours reading the TOS of all the sites you shop from.

Don't send messages.

Are you self hosting your email server ? Have you read your email provider TOS ? Each chat service TOS ? I doubt it.

Don't what videos on youtube. Don't search on google search. Don't use GPS.

You do that right ? Or have you actually read TOS for each service ?

If you said yes to all of this, either you are lying, living in a cave, or you are Richard Stallman. In which case, nice to meet you.

I don’t read tos (as in contracts of online services) but I don’t cry when something unexpected happens because I didn’t read them.

It’s my right to sign contracts without reading them. It’s not my right to pretend I didn’t sign them because I didn’t read them.

So you are ok with a system that is created to legally bind you to something you don't know and can be used against you later unless you take tremendous efforts to not be?

In that case, ok.

Most people are not, and it's reasonable.

In fact, it's terrible that we have to rely on lawyers because the law is so complicated you can't know or understand it all, just to live you regular life.

But TOS are even worst. Because they are asymmetrical. You don't get some right and some duty. Only duty for you, and rights for the other party, which is already economically and socially in a position of strength compared to you.

And no, it's not acceptable to tell people to accept that or live in a cave.

I don't have a google account attached to my android phone. This makes my life more difficult in all sort of ways, because society assumes more and more than I do.

So I'm just being punished because I don't want to give my life to a big corporation.

I understand people think it's BS. You should not have to do that.

Of course you get rights: the right to use the service!

You already have that right. At least in my country, by law.

The TOS is a layer on top of that right that corporations abuse to make that right conditional to their own laws.

EDIT: Arf, just looked at your comment history and now I understand I'm loosing my touch. One person answered:

"Could you please stop posting unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to HN? You've been doing it repeatedly, and we ban that sort of account because it's not what this site is for."

I missed the troll :)

Ok, you win. Have a nice day.

But could you claim that the contract is arbitrarily long and complex to knowingly discourage a reasonable person from reading it?

If you don’t have the legal expertise or the time to read a contract you hire a lawyer to have him see if the contract is reasonable, or you don’t sign it.

Doesn't matter for Meta. That collect data even if you don't use FB and without having an account.

> I wouldn’t sign a contract without reading it.

Sometimes it's not about how long does it take to read it, but even how it is interpreted by one of the parties, or if it includes clauses that are unreasonable.

For example, contracts signed by seniors who didn't have the knowledge or mental faculties to understand what they were signing, may be voided.

Ok it is obvious that there are one of three possible ways you handle terms of service:

1. You do not read any terms of service, like most people, and thus when you end up getting screwed over by a service you will accept that because you should have read the TOS, or perhaps you think the likelihood of you being screwed is minimal so you are willing to take the risk.

2. You read all TOS, do not accept those you disagree with, accept others you agree with.

3. You mix reading and not reading TOS dependent on how central you think they should be to your life, those that are not central you do not read because obviously those that are not central you can afford to have removed at the will of the corporations that own them.

But of course, you stated quite clearly that you wouldn't sign a contract without reading it, this must mean that you are doing number 2. You read every TOS you sign and some of them you refuse. That's great!

It's great because the parent poster you replied to made suppositions about how much time a person who did that would have to put aside to doing it, those were just suppositions though, you possess the cold hard facts and can tell us and them exactly how close their guestimates were, as well as answering the extremely important question as to how you manage your time to have enough of it to read and sign all those TOS, and in the cases where you have decided that a TOS did not fulfill your needs how you have handled it - how do you find services to replace them - have you ever been in a situation where you had to refuse a TOS even though your job may have depended on the usage of the service - how did you handle that?

Sure are a lot of things to find out about here, and finally someone who can help us out.

on edit: from reading further down the thread it seems when you said "I wouldn’t sign a contract without reading it." you actually meant that you would, but you would not complain when the company that you did not read the contract of screwed you over. Well that's sad. So I mean there is absolutely nothing a company could do to you that was not illegal that you would come complain about? Really?

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