4 ms·

I mean, if you're serious, the answer is that Facebook didn't claim to have read your terms of service addendum, but you did say you read theirs, when you signe

I mean, if you're serious, the answer is that Facebook didn't claim to have read your terms of service addendum, but you did say you read theirs, when you signed up. I do agree with the sentiment though. IMO, if one party to a contract cannot have a reasonable expectation (!) that the contract was read by the other party, the contract should be considered invalid.

Vespasian 5y ago
In some jurisdictions it already is. German / European courts have ruled many times that consumer TOS clauses which are "surprising" and/or "unusual" (e.g. "hidden" feed or waivers) are not enforceable.
- cperciva 5y ago
  Courts around the world have made similar rulings. The technical term is "contact of adhesion" and while exact rules vary from country to country, most courts will at a minimum strike out clauses which are considered to be "unexpected" on the basis that the customer is unlikely to have actually read the contract. (This is why clauses such as exclusions of liability are traditionally in all caps or bold -- on the theory that this draws attention to them and may help to save them.)
  - Vespasian 5y ago
    Thanks for going into further and teaching me the correct term for this.
BlackFly 5y ago
Except I didn't make that claim, I edited the DOM to make the button read, "I haven't read this agreement and waive no rights." Even if I did not, how do they expect to be able to prove that I did not? I am well within my rights to modify the copy of a contract supplied to me, so it can hardly be said to be fraudulent to do such a thing. It isn't my fault that they don't want a copy of what I actually agreed to... I really would like to see someone use this tactic in court. I am quite curious what the legal status of it would be and what the follow up arms race would look like if it a court sided with the user in such a case. I can imagine naive counters where they submit hashes of the agreed upon contents and suddenly typoes become legally binding when they refuse to accept such a modification.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  I once registered to an event where the condition of attendance was to agree to have your personal data processed (that was many years before GDPR came and made such bullshit illegal). This was declared through a HTML form, with a bit of client-side JS that disabled the "Submit" button until you checked the "I agree to data processing" checkbox. So of course I edited the page to let the submission through anyway, and the POST request had the appropriate consent boolean parameter to false instead of true. Since the registration completed successfully, they either ignored that parameter, or - what I was hoping would happen - their database had my row with a distinct FALSE on the consent column. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I decided to follow up on their data processing against my consent. Would I have a successful case? Or would they can me for working around their bit of client-side JS?
- hunter-gatherer 5y ago
  How did you edit it? I haven't ever had Facebook, but if I understand correctly you are saying that you edited the terms of service and then successfully hit the "submit" button?
  - grumple 5y ago
    You can edit the content of any web site via the browser's dev tools. It's not hard. This only changes it locally, although it can have effects on poorly designed sites. I have used this to buy tickets to an event for $1.
    - gibba999 5y ago
      I once bought something with AJAX requests. No, it wasn't unfair to the vendor. The vendor had an issue on a web site where the sales window closed, presumably to give the vendor time to process sales and print/mail tickets, but this was enforced front-end only. I was mid-check-out when the window closed with no warning. There were plenty of tickets left. There was plenty of time left too (the vendor had switched from paper to digital tickets for COVID19, so...). I think there was an exploitable security bug in there too, but I don't think anyone will exploit it. It's a little shop.

Vespasian 5y ago

In some jurisdictions it already is. German / European courts have ruled many times that consumer TOS clauses which are "surprising" and/or "unusual" (e.g. "hidden" feed or waivers) are not enforceable.

cperciva 5y ago
Courts around the world have made similar rulings. The technical term is "contact of adhesion" and while exact rules vary from country to country, most courts will at a minimum strike out clauses which are considered to be "unexpected" on the basis that the customer is unlikely to have actually read the contract. (This is why clauses such as exclusions of liability are traditionally in all caps or bold -- on the theory that this draws attention to them and may help to save them.)
- Vespasian 5y ago
  Thanks for going into further and teaching me the correct term for this.

BlackFly 5y ago

Except I didn't make that claim, I edited the DOM to make the button read, "I haven't read this agreement and waive no rights." Even if I did not, how do they expect to be able to prove that I did not? I am well within my rights to modify the copy of a contract supplied to me, so it can hardly be said to be fraudulent to do such a thing. It isn't my fault that they don't want a copy of what I actually agreed to... I really would like to see someone use this tactic in court. I am quite curious what the legal status of it would be and what the follow up arms race would look like if it a court sided with the user in such a case. I can imagine naive counters where they submit hashes of the agreed upon contents and suddenly typoes become legally binding when they refuse to accept such a modification.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
I once registered to an event where the condition of attendance was to agree to have your personal data processed (that was many years before GDPR came and made such bullshit illegal). This was declared through a HTML form, with a bit of client-side JS that disabled the "Submit" button until you checked the "I agree to data processing" checkbox. So of course I edited the page to let the submission through anyway, and the POST request had the appropriate consent boolean parameter to false instead of true. Since the registration completed successfully, they either ignored that parameter, or - what I was hoping would happen - their database had my row with a distinct FALSE on the consent column. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I decided to follow up on their data processing against my consent. Would I have a successful case? Or would they can me for working around their bit of client-side JS?
hunter-gatherer 5y ago
How did you edit it? I haven't ever had Facebook, but if I understand correctly you are saying that you edited the terms of service and then successfully hit the "submit" button?
- grumple 5y ago
  You can edit the content of any web site via the browser's dev tools. It's not hard. This only changes it locally, although it can have effects on poorly designed sites. I have used this to buy tickets to an event for $1.
  - gibba999 5y ago
    I once bought something with AJAX requests. No, it wasn't unfair to the vendor. The vendor had an issue on a web site where the sales window closed, presumably to give the vendor time to process sales and print/mail tickets, but this was enforced front-end only. I was mid-check-out when the window closed with no warning. There were plenty of tickets left. There was plenty of time left too (the vendor had switched from paper to digital tickets for COVID19, so...). I think there was an exploitable security bug in there too, but I don't think anyone will exploit it. It's a little shop.