> The answer is to enter into as few service contracts as possible
Even the idea that TOS qualifies as accepting a contract makes a farce of the entire concept of contract law.
Even the idea that TOS qualifies as accepting a contract makes a farce of the entire concept of contract law.
I think you're absolutely right morally, but I think you've made a pretty important technical error: they're not abusive because "only one party needs to abide...by the contract", they're abusive because only one party can unilaterally change the deal. The companies that make these "contracts" can actually follow them, but since they can change them at a whim, it only really binds the other party.
What I really don't understand is how it's supposed to be a fundamental part of contract law that there's a "meeting of the minds" where both parties agree to the same thing, and there are these click-through agreements that nobody reads, and everybody knows that nobody reads them, but they're still enforceable. I get why there needs to be a general presumption that you've actually read a contract that you've signed, otherwise you'd be flooded with people saying "actually I didn't read that" to get out of contracts they don't like anymore. But that presumption doesn't make any sense when one party doesn't read the contract, the other party knows nobody reads it, and everybody knows nobody reads it, but we all just sort of pretend.
Why do we need massive TOS for stuff? I'll just give you the money, and you give me the service. End of transaction!
By eating this donut you agree that we are not responsible for any health problems that might result, either directly or indirectly.
My guess is that you would probably get kicked off the service if anyone reads your TOS, so make sure to add onerous cancellation charges due to the user in your updated TOS.
A place like Meta or Microsoft would tell you to pound sand, but an aligned army of collective-bargaining agents might succeed in removing a specific term from a smaller service.
It is bi-directionally enforced contract, just not a symmetrically beneficial one.
This is my favorite...how exactly can I monitor compliance? No evidence of non-compliance - get tossed out of court. No court order for discovery - no ability to monitor/gather evidence compliance.
The idea that this is even a potential for mutuallity on a TOS is just farcical.
(Insert about 1000 other examples of very awkward ToS updates)
At which time the company has unilaterally denied my access to something I already paid for without seeking my affirmative consent.
In theory I could stop whatever I'm doing, go email the company a brief to the point letter indicating they've broken their ToS and are unacceptably impairing my ability to use my property under the contract that I did agree to, and giving them an opportunity to amend their problem and give me a rollback path.
Realistically the outcome of this is a brushoff and needing to file a consumer protection complaint or get a lawyer.
If the feature is something like "my car" I can't afford that opportunity cost and am coerced into accepting their contract by the way they presented the amended terms.
The actual reality behind "the social contract" is simply that people have the capability to act in ways that can and do affect other people. Because of this, most people find that it's beneficial to moderate our actions in relation to other people based on their preferences.
We are held to these obligations as seriously and as legally as we are held to real contracts, but unlike the bedrock that constitutes the basis for the legitimacy of all real contracts, these obligations are imposed upon us with no opportunity for consideration, consent, or rejection.
This argument would be valid if you could renounce US citizenship without first producing another citizenship. But it's not, and you can't. I never asked for a US citizenship, I don't want a US citizenship, and yet I'm bound by it and not free to revoke it.
This citizenship situation is more analogous to a slaveholder telling one of their slaves that they are technically free, because they are welcome to leave once they produce documented proof of ownership by another, different slaveholder. The slave is no sense actually free, despite the misleading, bad-faith assertions of the slaveholder and those who recognize the slaveholder's framework as inherently legitimate.
Imagine waking up at a car dealership that tells you that you MUST pay interest on a car whether you take possession of it or not, despite you never having signed any kind of contract with them, but they tell you that you are still free and nothing is wrong with the arrangement because they will let you off the hook for paying them as long as you can provide proof that you're bound to pay interest on another dealership's car instead. If you try to refuse paying the interest on the car you don't want and never agreed to buy, they will send a team of gunmen to your house in the middle of the night, throw a flashbang through your window, chain you up, and drag you to a cage they lock you in. They insist that the whole arrangement is perfectly fine because the people in the car dealership took a vote where they agreed to force you to be bound by those terms, and that's all the justification they feel they need.
Now imagine the same thing, but in addition to paying interest on the car you didn't want and never agreed to buy, you're also bound to help murder people at other car dealerships, too, at the discretion and whim of the car dealership you're currently being extorted by.
That doesn't sound completely insane to you?