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23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

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Re: 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

#201

Post by Joeri »

anon35 wrote: post #26
consumer451 wrote: post #2

My mother innocently used this service, and filled out the form identifying all relatives by name. The results she received were entirely unenlightening, 50% of my DNA is now in their sketchy database, and I have no way to opt-out of anything. I truly despise this organization.

This 2021 New Yorker article: How Your Family Tree Could Catch a Killer ( https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/22/how-your-famil... ) was incredibly illuminating and changed my perspective on our sense of privacy. With a surprisingly small fraction of the world's population sequenced, we can still match a sample to a person whose sequence we don't have . To quote the article: "Genetic genealogy, it turned out,…

Doesn’t that imply that we should object to all dna databases? If a database can be used to identify people not in the database, does the scale of the database matter? The consequence would be that law enforcement can no longer compile databases of dna materials (a curtailment which I wouldn’t mind, but many people see these databases as essential for modern law enforcement).

Re: 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

#202

Post by voxic11 »

CaptainZapp wrote: post #109
RyanShook wrote: post #51

To: arbitrationoptout@23andme.com Subject: Request to Opt-Out of Updated TOS 23andMe Team, I am contacting you regarding the recent changes to the 23andMe Terms of Service, dated November 30, 2023. My name is [your name as registered with 23andMe], and the email associated with my 23andMe account is [your 23andMe account email]. I hereby formally request to opt out of the newly updated Terms of Service. I do not cons…

Send it by certified mail. Or fax it. Or even send it via Telex Any mode of transmission where you can prove you sent it but don't send it just by email.

I am a young person who has never sent a fax so please forgive my ignorance, but how does a fax allow you to prove you sent it?

edit: nvm I looked it up myself and learned about fax receipts. Sucks that the equivalent feature in email (read receipts) is usually not enabled due to abuse by spammers.

Re: 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

#203

Post by anshorei »

conjectures wrote: post #168
timthelion wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another great on is that text size has legal meaning here. The larger/darker the text the greater the legal weight. So if the contract says two contradictory things, the larger text wins out...

A bold move. I like it.

A *bold* move indeed

Re: 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

#204

Post by paulmd »

nicd wrote: post #78
space_fountain wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true? Often ToS seem to mostly consist of boilerplate that's copied from business to business

Imagine there were a set of a few common terms that businesses could select, each with an icon, a high-level explanation, and the detailed legal copy. I think there is a common set of those that would probably cover 80% of needs. The remaining 20% could be "extended", custom terms for this company. Such a system seems like it would make things much easier for consumers to understand, and also save legal fees for most…

In general the problem is not that the documents are not readable or comprehensible - I understand perfectly well that in legalese it says that the situation will favor the business in every possible legal fashion and if some of those are not legal the remaining document will favor the business in every remaining possible fashion.

The problem is they are contracts of adhesion that consumers don’t have a real interest or consideration in, other than the performance being conditioned upon your agreement, and which they do not have any ability to debate or modify or generally any recourse except to go to another business with an equally odious contract as a condition of performance.

They’re not incomprehensible, they’re unconscionable, and solutions tackling the former are missing the point.

The problem is that the same “lobbying” that produced the regulatory environment permitting such contracts to be forced upon consumers also precludes any real attempt to tackle the latter. Businesses would scream here if you forced them to follow standard consumer protections, and our system is oriented to favor their interests over consumers in nearly every possible scenario as well.

Another “continental” solution to this would simply be to outlaw contracts of adhesion or contracts in which the consumer does not receive a consideration (other than performance of the contract). If you don’t have a consideration it’s simply not a valid or consciencable contract, people don’t agree to give up money or rights voluntarily in return for nothing, therefore these contracts must facially be coercive.

Re: 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

#205

Post by anonymouskimmer »

consumer451 wrote: post #33
anon35 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 2021 New Yorker article: How Your Family Tree Could Catch a Killer ( https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/11/22/how-your-famil... ) was incredibly illuminating and changed my perspective on our sense of privacy. With a surprisingly small fraction of the world's population sequenced, we can still match a sample to a person whose sequence we don't have . To quote the article: "Genetic genealogy, it turned out,…

This feels like a "think of the children" type of appeal. I personally don't have any murderous history to hide. But there are unintended consequences with all of these losses of privacy. As a peer comment has rightly pointed out, nation state adversaries now have these same profiles. Maybe they can find a common DNA profile for an efficient bio-weapon. Oops. I escaped an authoritarian regime as a child, thanks to th…

> nation state adversaries

I think you mean "nation state country polity" :P

> Maybe they can find a common DNA profile for an efficient bio-weapon

For this it doesn't matter whether a "nation state" is making the weapon. An empire state, sub-nation state, or non-state entity would be fine. What matters for a common DNA profile weapon is that said entity targets a mostly ethnic state, or non-state nation such as the Kurds, preferably with an ethnicity genetically distinct enough from one's own people, and that said ethnicity is genetically specific enough, in exactly the right ways, to target. As eesmith writes, good luck with that.

Re: 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

#206

Post by anonymouskimmer »

eesmith wrote: post #156
janalsncm wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How would you target "Christians" or "Americans" or "Hispanics"? You don’t need to have a 1:1 mapping in order to be effective. Incapacitating a sufficient number of a group is enough. Similarly, such a bioweapon in an assassination context doesn’t need to only kill the target or go unnoticed. It’s enough that it is a disease or irritant that a particular individual is susceptible to.

I think you're missing the point. Assuming you have a communicable bioweapon which is somehow able to target based on genetics, and assuming the rest of the world isn't able to defend against it, that still leaves the very tricky question of finding a genetic basis which characterizes any of those three categories in a way which is sufficiently effective. Do you really believe there is way to identify "Christians" ba…

I'm really curious what, and how, these commenters think a genetic bioweapon would target. Cell-surface receptors seem the easy target, but as we've seen with COVID, and the more general swine and avian flus passing to humans, specificity changes. And cell surface receptors aren't that specific for any ethnicity, so expect a nuclear response from the survivors (both from your target and from the others states who had affected citizens).

If targeting proteins or regulatory regions of DNA, how? Are you going to try to CRISPR it? This may be effective in quiescent or senescent cells. But I think even quiescent cells have some DNA repair pathways. At best such targeting may speed up the aging process and cause some cancers.

Are you going to integrate a toxic gene at a specific chromosomal locus? Maybe that would work. You'd need a very efficient gene therapy approach to do it though.

Re: 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

#207

Post by anonymouskimmer »

eesmith wrote: post #185
Filligree wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think you really need to solve those problems to cause trouble. You just need to think you have.

Just because you think you can create a bioweapon doesn't mean it causes trouble. And as I wrote, this sort of bioweapon won't be possible until we've effectively cured cancer, and likely also developed methods which can easily identify and stop it.

A secret skunkworks approach could facilitate genetic inventions that don't get passed into the general knowledge base. It would be difficult making discoveries that all of the other biologists working in society miss, but is remotely plausible.

Re: 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

#210

Post by guiambros »

heliodor wrote: post #187
tropdrop wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article points out that the mass-sent email used a different email address than that of the ToS. arbitrationoptout@23andme is the email in the ToS. Jury is out whether this hyperlink mix-up was intentional...

There are two processes at play: - refuse the updated terms of service - refuse the arbitration The previous version of the TOS had arbitration too, so I'm not sure what all the stink is about. Both versions tell you that you have 30 days to opt out of arbitration by emailing arbitrationoptout@... As usual, the journalists failed at the job and are spreading misinformation. Current version: https://www.23andme.com/le…

Ah, that makes sense now, thank you.

I was confused exactly because arbitration was in the previous ToS, so disagreeing with the new T&S doesn't give you new benefits (other than the full refund in case sampling doesn't work). See Bard [1] / ChatGPT's [2] assessment here.

It seems the 30d opt out was intentionally buried, so folks thought opting out of T&S would get you out of the forced arbitration.

[1] https://g.co/bard/share/9d7782eb4d99

[2] https://chat.openai.com/share/c63c4078-608c-46d7-8529-a9dcac...

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