5 ms·

The entire notion of being allowed to enforce arbitrary terms of service is absurd. There are probably a handful of terms everyone agrees are reasonable (no att

• jahnu 7mo ago
  Not to mention the unreasonable length and complexity of these things. I’ve seen shorter contracts for mergers and acquisitions.
  • RicoElectrico 7mo ago
    The pro tip is pasting such long ToS into NotebookLM and asking it to list e.g. top 5 surprising clauses (if you ask just about surprising clauses it treats you like an idiot and lists everything)
    • scotty79 7mo ago
      > lists everything To be fair existence of TOS is suspiring.
    • oneeyedpigeon 7mo ago
      But that gives you absolutely no legal advantage whatsoever, so you might as well save your time and not do it.
      • halJordan 7mo ago
        You're suffering from the unfortunate fallacy of "this has no immediate concrete value to my particular concern, so it is altogether worthless"
• netcan 7mo ago
  >It's like McDonald's selling you a burger and telling you how to eat it. And the way the resteraunt this right is by covering their walls with TOS text like an Egyptian tomb.
  • throwaway173738 7mo ago
    Like if Subway had a terms of service as wallpaper instead of weird news articles.
• silvestrov 7mo ago
  > It's like McDonald's selling you a burger and telling you how to eat it. and you are not allowed to criticize it or write about the size of it or how much meat there is in it or how filling it is to eat the burger. and you are definitely not allowed to compare it to burgers from other companies.
  • sysguest 7mo ago
    and you're not allowed to open a restaurant (same food industry == competition) if you have even took one bite of the burger
  • tclancy 7mo ago
    Please do not inquire about the location of the beef.
    • hansvm 7mo ago
      The beef is in the fries actually -- well, beef substitute -- they have a wheat-derived beef flavoring used to make the fries taste richer. The jury is still out on whatever is between the burger buns.
    • macintux 7mo ago
      I fear that reference may be too dated for this site's dominant demographics.
      • tclancy 7mo ago
        Agreed, but I had to let it leave the nest on its own. I am of a mind if I make one person laugh a lot it’s better than a polite twitter from the unwashed masses.
  • miohtama 7mo ago
    Not allowing to criticize is practically a law in some European countries https://ppc.land/german-businesses-systematically-delete-critical-reviews-using-eu-digital-services-act/ https://ppc.land/german-businesses-systematically-delete-cri...
• stinkbeetle 7mo ago
  > The entire notion of being allowed to enforce arbitrary terms of service is absurd. There are probably a handful of terms everyone agrees are reasonable (no attempted hacking, rate limits, do not break laws) and everything else should be unenforceable. Why? Why should a government prohibit private parties from agreeing to anything other than those 3 things? > Especially garbage like what you're allowed to do with the stuff you get from the service even while not using the service, or about setting up competing products. It's like McDonald's selling you a burger and telling you how to eat it. It is vaguely like that, but but I'm not sure the analogy facilitates understanding of this subject. McDonalds shouldn't tell you how you can eat your burger, therefore... companies must not enforce any terms on their services aside from those things. Why? I'm not saying any term should be enforceable. Contract law has a long history against that. I just wonder how and where you draw the line and what existing law is insufficient.
  • short_sells_poo 7mo ago
    Because the power is disproportionally concentrated with one party - the service provider. The users of the service are numerous, comparatively small and uncoordinated. In a situation like that, users have no means of resisting egregious terms, and no you cannot pull up stuff like "if you don't like it, don't buy it". As I wrote, the users are uncoordinated, and would take a huge effort to coordinate. Boycotting services rarely works (if ever). So what we end up with is that legal teams employed by firms optimize to shove as much bullshit into ToS as they can, the users grind their teeth and bear the bullshit, and get shittier service. Nobody really wins, because I'd argue the marginal gain for the company is minimal at best from this. The government is not there just to enforce laws, but also to legislate such that the scales are balanced. Otherwise we may as well live in a dictatorship.
    • stinkbeetle 7mo ago
      But some terms were claimed to be reasonable. If power being disproportionate is sufficient to void terms, why not those terms too? > The government is not there just to enforce laws, but also to legislate such that the scales are balanced. Otherwise we may as well live in a dictatorship. Should the state just prohibit all agreements between two parties unless the state's adjudicator decides they are exactly equal in "power" and permits it? Sounds horrific, like a dictatorship. The government is not my guardian and does not do my thinking for me. I get that many people are subservient and would much prefer that, but that's no good either. There's an enormous middle ground between anarchy and "the state intervenes to allegedly 'balance the scales' in every aspect of peoples' private lives".
• misnome 7mo ago
  > It's like McDonald's selling you a burger and telling you how to eat it. Or Disney telling you they are exempt from killing someone in their theme park restaurants because you signed up to Disney+… https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8jl0ekjr0go https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8jl0ekjr0go
  • jdiff 7mo ago
    It gets worse with added context: signed up for a free trial of Disney+ on a PS5 many years ago.
    • SkyBelow 7mo ago
      It gets worse x2: the executor of the estate having signed up for Disney+ means the estate of the deceased loses the right to sue, despite the deceased having never signed up. Like a client being bound by all unrelated legal agreements their lawyer entered into. (If I recall the details correct, it has been a while since I read into that case.)
      • rolandog 7mo ago
        Common sense and decency has departed the world's economic and legal systems for a while, huh? It now seems to be a "how evil can I be without it affecting our bottom line?" system.
        • scottyah 7mo ago
          It's all just games, they just want to win. Dollars are the overall points, but they're even willing to sacrifice some of those to win bigger cases more brutally.
  • jacquesm 7mo ago
    Interesting, that case was just withdrawn a few days ago: https://www.allergicliving.com/2026/03/03/lawsuit-against-disney-dropped-in-doctors-food-allergy-death/ https://www.allergicliving.com/2026/03/03/lawsuit-against-di... "Disney dropped its bid to force arbitration over the streaming service’s clause in August 2024, following a barrage of public backlash." And not because it was a clearly outrageous thing to do.
• gloosx 7mo ago
  Actually it's like McDonalds removing pickles from the big mac after it was already served to your table
  • hrmtst93837 7mo ago
    [flagged]
• bentcorner 7mo ago
  Unfortunately the only way this changes is if a company writes a just enough unreasonable ToS, and someone violates it in just the right way and the company decides to enforce said ToS, and the user fights back, and this all ends in court. I'd be surprised if all those stars align anytime soon.
• Aurornis 7mo ago
  > The entire notion of being allowed to enforce arbitrary terms of service is absurd. ToS can’t enforce completely arbitrary rules. They are still bound by the limitations of the law and the worst they can usually do is terminate your account. > It's like McDonald's selling you a burger and telling you how to eat it. And practically speaking they would be limited to telling you that you’re not welcome to come back and buy another one if you break those rules. They are not legally obligated to have you as a customer. You can break the ToS all you want for how to use online services. The risk you take is that they decide they don’t want your money any more and turn off your account. In my opinion, that’s a fair trade.
  • efreak 7mo ago
    I could be wrong, but I believe businesses are generally required to serve the public if they're open to the public, and they can only refuse to serve you for limited reasons such as being disruptive or offensive. I don't think the way someone eats a hamburger is a valid reason to refuse service unless you're a private club (ie not open to the public). Maybe if you're a goop[1] you might get kicked out. [1]: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36664/36664-h/36664-h.htm#page3 https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36664/36664-h/36664-h.htm#pa...
• ajross 7mo ago
  > The entire notion of being allowed to enforce arbitrary terms of service is absurd. For clarity, and while the HN seems to imply that, that is not what this decision was actually about. It was about the specific requirement that disputes be handled by binding arbitration. The circuit court was actually clear they weren't making decisions about the facts of the case, precisely because the arbitrator gets to make those calls. Now, sure, that can mean "you lose" in practice, depending on the claim and the arbiter. And in this specific situation it's a death knell for the plaintiffs, because this was an emerging class action suite looking for a big payout. But no, the 9th circuit has not found that companies have the ability to enforce "arbitrary terms of service" via a TOS update email. They only made a call on this particular term update, and they were clear that they did so because it does not represent an actual change to the service terms (only to the dispute process).