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Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?

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Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?

#161

Post by pas »

Buttons840 wrote: post #118
janalsncm wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This “solution” is a non-starter. People like to imagine that we have a marketplace with degrees of freedom in all directions, but we don’t. We have to make choices, and often that just means choosing the least bad option. But it is interesting to note how we got here. https://www.npr.org/2023/07/13/1187543648/terms-and-conditio... To summarize the podcast episode, contracts used to be individually tailored, but busi…

I want a political cartoon: Panel #1 shows "The Free Market Ideal" with people bustling about, negotiating with the owners of wooden carts filled with produce and goods, lots of people and energy. Panel #2 show "The Free Market Reality" with a bunch of tired people waiting in line for one of two computer terminals, one of which is showing an error screen and it appears may have broken (the other is showing a ToS).

and simply call it oranges to apples!

after all, you can argue/haggle/negotiate with a myriad of software developer firms (who are happy to build and operate a bespoke service for you). you can also do the same with many service providers, all you need is a big enough order and they are eager to give discounts. big enough check and you can pick and choose T&C too.

free market or not, market forces, mostly supply-and-demand and barriers to entry and costs lead to very few choices.

however, it's likely that the accumulation of software technology and decreasing costs will make a lot more features available in service form.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?

#162

Post by Zetice »

toast0 wrote: post #158
Zetice wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes? You can work decades in many careers without touching a Microsoft product. Ut more importantly, you have no right to Microsoft products, and it regularly blows my mind when people try to argue otherwise. Besides, if your beliefs are so incompatible with society that they exclude you from holding down a job, that belief becomes a pathology, not a conviction. Understanding how to operate successfully in society is…

At least in my corporate experience, it's hard for IT to avoid the pull of Exchange + Outlook. And it's hard to work at a company when you refuse to use email.

Hard is not impossible, and if you want to put strange moral constraints on who you work for, that's your cross to bear.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?

#164

Post by MikusR »

kramerger wrote: post #43

I 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.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/servicesagreement/upcoming-u...

https://www.paypal.com/us/legalhub/upcoming-policies-full

Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?

#165

Post by salawat »

Zetice wrote: post #162
toast0 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least in my corporate experience, it's hard for IT to avoid the pull of Exchange + Outlook. And it's hard to work at a company when you refuse to use email.

Hard is not impossible, and if you want to put strange moral constraints on who you work for, that's your cross to bear.

Interesting. So riddle me this.

Microsoft goes to great lengths to court primary education systems to instill themselves as the "taught software stack". You say no one has any right to Microsoft's products... Then does that not run into somewhat of a public contradiction when public education systems shove it down students throats?

In point of fact, it sounds like the publically taught option should be exclusively GPL or other FLOSS software offerings, because contrary to your assertion, every student does have an implicit right to those as a public good.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?

#166

Post by smsm42 »

mindvirus wrote: post #93
kwanbix wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is crazy how unreasonable the world of law is. Just some days ago, I installed some game (Assassins Creed I think?) and it had 3 agreements to read, each one a kilometer long (just a figure of speech). Really? To play a game? Of course nobody reads them and just press Accept.

Part of me wishes there was a law that companies had to implement checks that their customers read and understood the agreement. Timers, making sure people had each line of text on the screen for a sufficient amount of time, and line by line video explainers. Just to expose the ridiculousness of it all.

I've seen timers on ToS screen. Of course, it just makes one wait a bit and take another sip of the drink before clicking OK without reading, because nobody can understand that shit anyway, time or no time.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?

#167

Post by smsm42 »

samsolomon wrote: post #145
kwanbix wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is crazy how unreasonable the world of law is. Just some days ago, I installed some game (Assassins Creed I think?) and it had 3 agreements to read, each one a kilometer long (just a figure of speech). Really? To play a game? Of course nobody reads them and just press Accept.

Honestly, would be a cool to track and use GPT-4 to summarize changes in terms of service agreements.

That's like reading diffs instead of reading source code. If the code is clean and the change us simple, it's easy. If the code is dense and dirty and the change is complex, it's next to impossible to figure out what's up.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?

#168

Post by smsm42 »

RecycledEle wrote: post #134
kwanbix wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is crazy how unreasonable the world of law is. Just some days ago, I installed some game (Assassins Creed I think?) and it had 3 agreements to read, each one a kilometer long (just a figure of speech). Really? To play a game? Of course nobody reads them and just press Accept.

What kind of person agrees to 3 long contracts to play a game? I would not do that. I think the problem is with the consumer, not the producer.

Virtually every kind. The risk is low (if game companies routinely extracted player's kidneys using little noticed section in TOS as legal basis, we'd likely know it already) and the reward is significant.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?

#169

Post by smsm42 »

bilsbie wrote: post #154
__s wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't hold up in court. Just because you agree to a contract doesn't mean it's legally binding

Where’s the limit though? What decides wha they can put in there and what they can’t?

In common law jurisdictions it'd likely be the courts setting the limits, using judgement and precedent to set what is reasonable and what is not in the contract. If they put there that they get your car, and come to collect, you tell them to take a hike, they can sue and likely lose because a judge would say it's unreasonable, and they'll be on hook for court costs. In the borderline cases, may still be worth it for them, but pushing it too far is just losing money.

Re: Ask HN: Why did Microsoft, Meta, and PayPal update their ToS today?

#170

Post by [deleted] »

Hackbraten wrote: post #88
kwanbix wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is crazy how unreasonable the world of law is. Just some days ago, I installed some game (Assassins Creed I think?) and it had 3 agreements to read, each one a kilometer long (just a figure of speech). Really? To play a game? Of course nobody reads them and just press Accept.

What I do is spot check, i.e. open an agreement, pick two or three spots at random, and do my best to read and understand those. My hope is if just 1000 people did that, they’d be able to collectively spot unexpected/unacceptable terms and make them public.

[deleted]
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