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I hate adhesive ToS / Privacy Policies. I think options for data export should have to be sent to the user alongside privacy policy changes. I also think com

I hate adhesive ToS / Privacy Policies. I think options for data export should have to be sent to the user alongside privacy policy changes. I also think companies should be required to show TOS / Privacy Policies in a modal dialog that’s displayed for the amount of time a fast reader would take to read them. If the average person reads 250 words / min with 70-80% comprehension, that’s 16 minutes for a 4k word policy. Since it’s legalese, I bet it’s 30+ minutes for most people. That’s ridiculous.

skybrian 7y ago
People are already pretty annoyed by constant cookie notices. Do you think making these notices more annoying will be popular? Maybe we need to think about alternatives to what is effectively more legal paperwork in daily life?
- pmlnr 7y ago
  The cookie notices are the true face of the modern internet: what should have happened is that there should be no cookies until needed - so not until you log in or do "add to cart" and similar things. No cookies at all. Nothing. Instead the notices happened.
  - goto11 7y ago
    You don't need to show the cookie notice for stuff like login or shopping carts. It is not about cookies, it is about recording, storing and selling tracking information beyond what is necessary for the functionality of the website.
  - lotu 7y ago
    cookies are needed to “frequency cap” ads (avoid showing the same ad over and over and over again) and for enforcing user’s ban on specific ads, (yes google’s ad choices this so, if an ad is annoying you can ban it even if you are not being targeted by that ad). While the former is more for the benefit of the advertiser, the publisher also sometimes tries to avoid annoying the user.
pmiller2 7y ago
I get what you’re saying here, but is there an alternative to “take it or leave it” policies on the internet? It’s not like a company can negotiate with each individual user and come to a meeting of the minds. That said, it seems like the real issue is that the policies are too long and unreadable. For that, I think providing a plain language version that clearly states “this is not the official policy,” but links to the official policy, could be good enough. I don’t know how much legal exposure is involved for the company here, but it seems like a workable compromise.
- Karunamon 7y ago
  >is there an alternative to “take it or leave it” policies on the internet? Anywhere covered by GDPR, for one. One of the features of that law is that you don't get to make access to your service conditional on providing personal information that is not strictly necessary to make the service work.
  - pmiller2 7y ago
    That doesn’t apply to TOS other than privacy and data usage terms. This is a far more general problem than GDPR can solve.
ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
I don't get it. People want comprehensive details about what companies do with their information, but they also want short privacy policies. You can't have both. And if you look at Google's privacy policy, it's not legalese at all. It's mostly explanatory, since its text binds Google, not the user. The TOU is a different matter, but, again, users and the law have forced companies into the situation where they have to explicitly spell out every detail. Even with that, Google's terms are written in what seems to me to be plain English (https://policies.google.com/terms?gl=us https://policies.google.com/terms?gl=us). What would you cut from that to make it more concise? I can see a few things, but I'm also not a lawyer, and I'm not equipped to judge what liabilities each sentence might protect Google from. Most people never read this stuff because most people just don't care. They'll never have a dispute with Google that would be covered by the terms, and they don't care enough about privacy to find a less convenient but more privacy-sensitive alternative. Even if they do care about privacy, they probably have a pretty good idea of what kinds of information Google collects, so the privacy policy is at most a reference for cases where they are unsure. Attempting to force them to read it would be unproductive, since it contains information that is either irrelevant or else already known to potential users.
- Drdrdrq 7y ago
  You are missing the point. There should be no need for such policies. Google should not be able / allowed to collect this data, with or without user consent.
  - ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
    If that's what the person I was replying to meant, they should just say that. They shouldn't say, "It's too long to read." I don't agree at all with your point of view. I still think consenting adults can take some responsibility for making their own decisions about things. Obviously there should be exceptions when there are serious safety concerns, but such is plainly not the case with search engines. Anyway, the TOU doesn't even address privacy very much. It would be a paragraph shorter if Google collected no user data at all. So I don't really think that is the point the top-level poster in this thread was making. Or if it was the point they were trying to make, they were doing so circuitously indeed.

skybrian 7y ago

People are already pretty annoyed by constant cookie notices. Do you think making these notices more annoying will be popular? Maybe we need to think about alternatives to what is effectively more legal paperwork in daily life?

pmlnr 7y ago
The cookie notices are the true face of the modern internet: what should have happened is that there should be no cookies until needed - so not until you log in or do "add to cart" and similar things. No cookies at all. Nothing. Instead the notices happened.
- goto11 7y ago
  You don't need to show the cookie notice for stuff like login or shopping carts. It is not about cookies, it is about recording, storing and selling tracking information beyond what is necessary for the functionality of the website.
- lotu 7y ago
  cookies are needed to “frequency cap” ads (avoid showing the same ad over and over and over again) and for enforcing user’s ban on specific ads, (yes google’s ad choices this so, if an ad is annoying you can ban it even if you are not being targeted by that ad). While the former is more for the benefit of the advertiser, the publisher also sometimes tries to avoid annoying the user.

pmiller2 7y ago

I get what you’re saying here, but is there an alternative to “take it or leave it” policies on the internet? It’s not like a company can negotiate with each individual user and come to a meeting of the minds. That said, it seems like the real issue is that the policies are too long and unreadable. For that, I think providing a plain language version that clearly states “this is not the official policy,” but links to the official policy, could be good enough. I don’t know how much legal exposure is involved for the company here, but it seems like a workable compromise.

Karunamon 7y ago
>is there an alternative to “take it or leave it” policies on the internet? Anywhere covered by GDPR, for one. One of the features of that law is that you don't get to make access to your service conditional on providing personal information that is not strictly necessary to make the service work.
- pmiller2 7y ago
  That doesn’t apply to TOS other than privacy and data usage terms. This is a far more general problem than GDPR can solve.

ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago

I don't get it. People want comprehensive details about what companies do with their information, but they also want short privacy policies. You can't have both. And if you look at Google's privacy policy, it's not legalese at all. It's mostly explanatory, since its text binds Google, not the user. The TOU is a different matter, but, again, users and the law have forced companies into the situation where they have to explicitly spell out every detail. Even with that, Google's terms are written in what seems to me to be plain English (https://policies.google.com/terms?gl=us https://policies.google.com/terms?gl=us). What would you cut from that to make it more concise? I can see a few things, but I'm also not a lawyer, and I'm not equipped to judge what liabilities each sentence might protect Google from. Most people never read this stuff because most people just don't care. They'll never have a dispute with Google that would be covered by the terms, and they don't care enough about privacy to find a less convenient but more privacy-sensitive alternative. Even if they do care about privacy, they probably have a pretty good idea of what kinds of information Google collects, so the privacy policy is at most a reference for cases where they are unsure. Attempting to force them to read it would be unproductive, since it contains information that is either irrelevant or else already known to potential users.

Drdrdrq 7y ago
You are missing the point. There should be no need for such policies. Google should not be able / allowed to collect this data, with or without user consent.
- ijpoijpoihpiuoh 7y ago
  If that's what the person I was replying to meant, they should just say that. They shouldn't say, "It's too long to read." I don't agree at all with your point of view. I still think consenting adults can take some responsibility for making their own decisions about things. Obviously there should be exceptions when there are serious safety concerns, but such is plainly not the case with search engines. Anyway, the TOU doesn't even address privacy very much. It would be a paragraph shorter if Google collected no user data at all. So I don't really think that is the point the top-level poster in this thread was making. Or if it was the point they were trying to make, they were doing so circuitously indeed.