Earlier quoted context omitted.
No 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.
Crowdsource it. Something like Wikipedia might work.
Then do it.
Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?
51–60 of 191 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?
#52Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?
#53Illumi...
No yea probably just some US EU Data regulations thing.
Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?
#54Project idea: host version controlled TOS copies from companies to see what changes each time.
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Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?
#55Project idea: host version controlled TOS copies from companies to see what changes each time.
Tailscale does this! https://github.com/tailscale/terms-and-conditions
Because “our legal team advised us not to summarize changes”, so now you can just view diffs!
Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?
#56I tried to read some of them to see what has changed. I really tried... If any lawyers from the future are reading this: It was impossible for me to see what I was agreeing to. Furthermore, I was not given a chance to not agree with these (unknown) changes.
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Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?
#57I tried to read some of them to see what has changed. I really tried... If any lawyers from the future are reading this: It was impossible for me to see what I was agreeing to. Furthermore, I was not given a chance to not agree with these (unknown) changes.
The answer to this is to not agree to it (your “chance” is to stop using the service).
Exactly. And it's actually quite easy for some of these products (except maybe for PayPal if you don't have a bank account).
Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
VisualPing already does this: 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.
Why does such a thing need to be a business to begin with? Just host a github or expose this functionality on wikipedia.
Self hosted mediawiki is easy enough
Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
The answer to this is to not agree to it (your “chance” is to stop using the service).
Exactly. And it's actually quite easy for some of these products (except maybe for PayPal if you don't have a bank account).
Yeah, just change place of work everytime when company asks you to do somwthing with any Microsoft product.
Is this your solution?
Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
VisualPing already does this: 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.
Why does such a thing need to be a business to begin with? Just host a github or expose this functionality on wikipedia.
Hosting 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.