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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

#211

Post by acdha »

randomdata wrote: post #194
acdha wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s more than “so what” because those people aren’t coming from nowhere. American businesses spend a lot of money promoting libertarianism to this end, and it’s been effective enough that any reforms will face unified opposition from every Republican in Congress and likely some Democrats. Most of these are minority positions in the public but not in terms of legislative votes.

> American businesses spend a lot of money promoting libertarianism to this end American businesses would be the first one crying if they had to operate in a libertarian environment. In reality, they spend a lot of money to ensure heavy regulation that allows them to build moats.

They’re pretty fond of disclaiming obligations and not being sued in real courts, though. The key thing is recognizing that most of the libertarian media exists to serve the funders’ interests, not to promote a coherent ideology.

Re: 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

#212

Post by randomdata »

acdha wrote: post #211
randomdata wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> American businesses spend a lot of money promoting libertarianism to this end American businesses would be the first one crying if they had to operate in a libertarian environment. In reality, they spend a lot of money to ensure heavy regulation that allows them to build moats.

They’re pretty fond of disclaiming obligations and not being sued in real courts, though. The key thing is recognizing that most of the libertarian media exists to serve the funders’ interests, not to promote a coherent ideology.

What media is seen as holding a libertarian ideology? That is not a common bias. I do see the "consumers should have more choice" bent that you seem to be talking about more prevalently, but that's something quite different.

Re: 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

#213

Post by eesmith »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #207
eesmith wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, no. That does not seem plausible at all.

Again, the technology would be able to cure cancer. Do you really think all those employees - who know that their friends and family could be cured of their cancer - would be willing to keep mum of the cure?

Re: 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

#214

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

carstenhag wrote: post #174
justinpombrio wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that courts haven't even tested if terms of service are enforceable, never mind sudden updates to them.

I assume you mean US courts? In other countries there have been lots of cases about TOS, in one way or another. Strange that there isn't such a thing in the us

Not the parent commenter nor a lawyer, but I believe it's something like a company can't put things that someone would never agree to in the TOS and have it be binding. But obviously that "would never agree to" part is fuzzy at best and possibly what they're referring to when saying it's not been tested. I might be mistaken about that but I have heard something to that effect from a prosecutor I know.

Re: 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

#215

Post by jacquesm »

eesmith wrote: post #183
jacquesm wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How would you target "Christians" or "Americans" or "Hispanics"? You don't have to be able to target any group to be able to target some groups. Blacks, Jews and Uighurs might be sufficient. And those definitely have genetic markers.

"Blacks" is a term with very little basis in genetics. What do you think the bioweapon will target? "Jews" is less diverse, but it's not like there's a single "I am Jewish" marker. Just look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_studies_on_Jews to see how difficult is it, with overlaps to other populations, and the need to correlate multiple haplogroups. How do you put all that detection machinery into a bioweapon…

> ...

Yes, such a weapon will never be very precise. But since no weapon ever is (collateral damage) that doesn't mean it won't be used.

> And how do you prevent the bioweapon from mutating that specificity away?

You don't. But even that won't stop such a weapon from being used. Every weapon that man kind has been able to envision and create has been used. Not a single exception.

Re: 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

#216

Post by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF »

justneedaname wrote: post #132
houston_Euler wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the sender have a time-stamped copy?

2 Generals problem

Courts aren't dumb, though. It's a lot harder for an average person to fake something in their gmail outbox than it is for someone working for a corporation to delete emails from an inbox. Google could also possibly be sent a subpoena.

Re: 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

#217

Post by CrendKing »

mminer237 wrote: post #195
CrendKing wrote: post #55

What prevents 23andMe from simply deleting the opt-out emails they receive and claiming they never received anything, in case someone did sue them?

The sender could simply show in his outbox that he did send such and 23andMe would be in even worse legal trouble then?

I asked because unlike paper mail where the deliverer is one trust-able government/commercial body, email by its distributed nature is delivered by hosts everywhere in the internet. How does plaintiff generally gather evidence to prove the email was indeed delivered in these cases?

Re: 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

#218

Post by anonymouskimmer »

eesmith wrote: post #213
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, no. That does not seem plausible at all. Again, the technology would be able to cure cancer. Do you really think all those employees - who know that their friends and family could be cured of their cancer - would be willing to keep mum of the cure?

It depends on how isolated they are kept from each other's work. It's not as if we don't already have decent cancer therapeutic technologies in the pipeline.

Re: 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

#219

Post by jacquesm »

eesmith wrote: post #213
anonymouskimmer wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, no. That does not seem plausible at all. Again, the technology would be able to cure cancer. Do you really think all those employees - who know that their friends and family could be cured of their cancer - would be willing to keep mum of the cure?

> Again, the technology would be able to cure cancer.

That's your strawman. But I can - easily, at that - imagine a POC that would be specific enough to kill a single human with a very high degree of success given some meta data about them and a sample of their DNA. I'm for obvious reasons not going to expand on that here because we have too many idiots in this world but the fact that you can't imagine such things doesn't mean that others can not.

Re: 23andMe updates their TOS to force binding arbitration

#220

Post by jacquesm »

anonymouskimmer wrote: post #206
eesmith wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You are thinking in entirely the wrong direction.
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