* Product (or Sales) will ask if they have the right to do something (now or in the future). No one is sure, and the issue is eventually bounced to Legal.
* Legal eventually tells them that the answer is no (or that it's unclear), and that the Terms will have to be edited to give 100% permission.
* Legal then goes ahead and proposes edits to the terms or privacy policy. Because they are lawyers, they focus on giving the website the absolute broadest possible permission. At no point is the Marketing or Communications team informed or consulted.
* Legal then coordinates with Product, and the changes are rolled out at the same time as (or shortly before) the product changes go live.
Then either users simply don't care, or they do and then this happens:
* Users spot the changes and freak out.
* The Marketing and Communications freak out as well, and hear about the changes (often for the first time).
* The Terms of Use are revised again, so that they more clearly communicate their original intent. Users either decide they still trust you, or they decide that the trust has been breached and look for alternatives.
I have seen this happen again and again. Very rarely is the website actively trying to screw their users. Much much more often, the real culprit is a lack of communication between the Legal and PR/Communications team.
It is absolutely critical that your General Counsel be on good terms with your head of PR (and that your head of PR/Comm is friendly with your head of Product). If that's the case, then these issues tend not to crop up. If not, then they tend to explode very publicly and violently on the entire company.
The #1 thing you can do to avoid these issues is to treat edits to the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use as a major communications effort, and make sure that all changes are vetted with an internal advocate for your users (ideally, your Comm team is led by such a person). Otherwise, you could be headed for a blowup very similar to this one.