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Project idea: host version controlled TOS copies from companies to see what changes each time.
by kingkongjaffa 3y ago
Project idea: host version controlled TOS copies from companies to see what changes each time.
- klntsky 3y agoLet's do this? Anyone can hit my username at gmail or telegram
- slater 3y agoThis exists already, though the URL escapes me
- thephyber 3y agoVisualPing already does this: https://visualping.io/blog/how-to-monitor-changes-in-terms-and-conditions https://visualping.io/blog/how-to-monitor-changes-in-terms-a... Docacracy did it a decade ago, but closed shop. The problem isn’t the tech — it’s coming up with a business model that pays for the system and upkeep. As much as people give lip service about privacy, they sure don’t throw money at lobbying efforts that protect their rights in those areas.
- jupp0r 3y agoYou can build this with what Github offers for free to open source projects.
- flamey 3y agoGitHub offers doesn't pay for motivation to do the upkeep.
- prepend 3y agoBut it reduces the cost of upkeep so now we need less motivation.
- 1-6 3y agoI like where this discussion is headed. Scrape the ToS and keep a record of that. Are ToS's copywrited?
- raffraffraff 3y agoThe problem is that these documents aren't served from standardized or predictable URLs across every service provider or regulatory body. I work with a firm who charge heaps of money to provide large companies with publicly available documents. Why do they pay? Because finding the latest copy of 25 different legal docs is a pain in the ass because the entire internet is a broken mess of 404s, over a long enough timeline.
- pwdisswordfishc 3y agoYes, at some point someone has probably written a copy.
- withinboredom 3y agoI thought contracts can’t be copyrighted? There is too much similarity between them for it to make any sense.
- hnbad 3y agoNo, that's nonsense. I don't know if there's a special exemption in the US but contracts and policies can be and absolutely are under copyright. Individual clauses might not be but the contract in its entirety likely meets the threshold of originality required for it to not simply be considered a plain collection of facts. The similarity between standard contracts does make it harder to demonstrate a copyright violation based on the text alone though.
- KingLancelot 3y agoWhy does such a thing need to be a business to begin with? Just host a github or expose this functionality on wikipedia.
- d1str0 3y agoNo one said it had to be a business. They were making the point that its hard to keep something like that running and maintained for free.
- gpvos 3y agoCrowdsource it. Something like Wikipedia might work.
- rat9988 3y agoThen do it.
- thephyber 3y agoMy point was there have already been open source / crowdsourced efforts and they typically fail — because the effort is high and there is little/no money because people don’t actually value the result. Solve the sustainable efforts problem and/or make the TOS publishing required to go to a standard service (like US public stocks have to publish forms to SEC.gov)
- iamacyborg 3y agoSelf hosted mediawiki is easy enough
- gls2ro 3y agoHosting is not the problem that generates the need for a business. The problem is having people available to do the work that is needed to keep the system useful and up-to-date, which includes writing code that will parse the ToS, maintaining it, and upgrading programming languages, packages ... and most probably lawyers. So where those diffs are hosted is a tiny cost of what is needed to make it work. All these require effort. And effort can be paid with one of two things: time and money. And for someone to have time to work full-time on this, they need to have ... money to sustain themselves. Thus this kind of project needs money => that either can be a grant, donation from a big entity, or business model. Donations from users are not working for long-term sustainability in most cases of good projects for society. Or at least I don't know a successful project like this.
- chrisjj 3y ago-1 for VisualPing.
- Realworld404 3y agoMy hypothesis is that a relatively small number of people actually care that much about digital privacy. People generally prefer convenience over privacy
- api 3y agoI see the creeping panopticon as being a bit like climate change. Anyone with some knowledge of history can see what horrible things might happen if we build a comprehensive surveillance machine, but nothing terrible has happened yet. It’s hard to convince people to give up convenience to prevent a danger that hasn’t yet come and cannot be clearly seen. With climate change it will take years of records for extreme weather being blown away. For this it might take a developed nation falling into hard core fascism and the digital dragnet being turned directly against its citizenry. China is perhaps a case with its social credit system and camps, but it might not be extreme enough and may be too far away. It may have to happen here, or much worse. Americans in particular think “it can’t happen here” even though it almost has several times.
- MatthiasPortzel 3y agoShow HN from 10 days ago. => https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37064152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37064152 TOS Notify
- chrisjj 3y ago+1 for www.tosnotify.com .
- maxbond 3y agoThis is related but not identical https://tosdr.org/ https://tosdr.org/
- nanidin 3y agoThe fun thing with ToS is that you know every large company with a ToS (or EULA for that matter) has analytics and knows exactly how long you read that ToS (if you did at all), and is smart enough to know objectively if you read it or did not read it.
- microtonal 3y agoThe good thing is that if you relinquish more personal data by accepting the changed ToS, it is not valid or legal in the EU, since the GDPR requires you to ask consent explicitly, unambiguously, and and in simple terms, and per use case (so, not buried in a ToS). Moreover, you should have the option to deny consent per use of personal data. I wonder if they are serving different ToS in the EU (haven't received anything from Microsoft yet).
- NoZebra120vClip 3y agoWell, perhaps. For a little while, (and I should resume this behavior) I would capture TOS and save them away to read at leisure. Because what happens, especially with fiddly mobile apps, is that you're granted a single glimpse at the bona fide link to TOS/EULA, and never again will you find how you got there. (Sometimes the link fails right off the bat, giving you zero opportunity to read through the terms!) So I would take advantage of that and save it, by any means necessary: screen scrape, copy-paste, print-as-PDF, take photo of screen with second device, whatever it took, because they could make it difficult! But then I would usually end up with a copy of the contract that I could later call up and check on. So, your suggestion that analytics can determine my dwell time on the document when it's presented to me, that's not going to be indicative of how much time I really spent reading it after copying and saving it. I've found that this is a good practice, and not for the reason you're thinking of. I've found that I'm extraordinarily bad at reading legal documents like this (including my lease, employment contract, benefits and insurance docs, you name it) because even if I think I understand, I didn't get it, and it's pointless anyway because negotiating the wording is not on the table. But it's a good practice to save these, because of this: there are often instructions included about how to resolve disputes and claims against the company. These instructions usually follow a strict procedure and they have rules about what you can do. They also have contact info, and again, you will never ever find this contact info anywhere else ever again if you don't save the EULA at first opportunity. They will tell you what kind of arbitration or court proceedings are acceptable, they will tell you the complaints procedure from start to end, time frames, and what to expect at each point. This info is gold, and it's not going to be available when you come to have a dispute, and you're not even going to be aware of the procedure at that point, and so you will automatically be disqualified and lose any dispute because you didn't follow procedure. Have fun!
- firecall 3y agoIf the T&Cs are at a public URL, then an alternative way is to self host changedetection.io and monitor for changes. I run it to see changes to my competitors websites. Well that’s the idea - I don’t actually monitor it LOL. I just have it running in Docker.
- nanidin 3y agoThis is a great idea, but I'm also interested in the why behind those changes.
- Solvency 3y agoThis was literally posted on HN like a few days ago as a fully completed project.
- xwowsersx 3y agoThere was this Show HN recently for a tool that automatically notifies you when terms change. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37064152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37064152
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- j5155 3y agoTailscale does this! https://github.com/tailscale/terms-and-conditions https://github.com/tailscale/terms-and-conditions Because “our legal team advised us not to summarize changes”, so now you can just view diffs!
- janalsncm 3y agoThis already exists. Took me forever to find though. https://github.com/OpenTermsArchive https://github.com/OpenTermsArchive
- omneity 3y agoYou can use https://monitoro.co https://monitoro.co to monitor and extract TOS, and send the changes to a webhook that does whatever you want with the data :) Disclaimer, I work on Monitoro.
- maxloh 3y agoMaybe just use Way back Machine?
- shireboy 3y agoThen use LLM and manual review to summarize down to laymen’s terms
- Aachen 3y agoIt's a requirement that contracts you enter into are provided to you in a way that you can store them on a durable medium. Maybe it's a good idea to make use of that and store your copy, if you want to know what changed