The ‘Terms and Conditions’ Reckoning Is Coming

The problem is the average adult doesn't get educated in the ways of contract law.

In fact, I think this is a symptom of the fact that attorneys and legal practitioners are a "protected" class with a relatively high barrier to entry to basic education in their field.

While everyone has the "freedom" to learn on their own time, it seems disingenuous to be able to legally bind people who honestly have no clue what they are agreeing to.

Also, from the tech perspective, UX demands that "onboarding" to a product be as minimally difficult as possible. Tech will ALWAYS give you the option to skip reading the EULA, and T&C because otherwise, most people would look at the terms being laid out and just say "Screw that noise."

You have a fundamental asymmetry which will be ruthlessly exploited.

If not by the legalese and banking on the user not understanding, then by the company just glossing over how skewed in their favor the terms are and rushing the user past the ugly bits to the custom designed addictive parts.

At a really high, generalized level (with contract law being a subset), I think the legal system (and in many ways society in general) has yet to really get a grasp on the concept of resource exhaustion attacks. We all know about DDOS as it applies to digital systems, but individual humans and the social systems we make also all have actual, hard limits on how much information we can possibly process, store, and communicate/move around. A lot of the foundations of law and debate date back to long before we entered the sharp part of our current information production J-curve, when it was much more possible for a single human to be more generalist and it was simultaneously simply more difficult and expensive to pump out hundreds or thousands of pages of contract and law. But those days are past, and at some point, to the extent we want (and we should want it) law to work for humans, there need to be actual principles around the fact that if something exceeds the time/memory/intelligence a human could reasonably apply to it then it shouldn't matter if "they could in theory". Let alone if they really couldn't, even in theory (not enough seconds left in their lives). Organizations may be able to act as superhumans here, able to subdivide work and specialize towards a single goal, but for regular actual humans resource cost should be a fundamental consideration of legal validity.

I'd like to see this improved for both sides of the equation though FWIW. I agree that as a user/consumer, the EULA/TOS situation is intolerable and that there's a lot of sketchy or outright bullshit stuff in many (maybe most) of them. But I do think some of the contents are also genuinely guarding against liability that frankly really just shouldn't exist by default either. If someone writes up some software or makes a service and just puts it out there on the open market with no promises, they shouldn't need any sort of contract at all saying they won't be liable if it's used for life-safety critical applications for example (EULAs/TOS are full of this, right up to "this is not for nuclear reactors you fucking idiot" clauses). The law should provide for minimal basic standards and simple money-back guarantees for lack of performance, but just as users shouldn't have to read a 50 page EULA that somewhere buried within tries to take lots of their rights and lay claim to as much of their information as possible and such, so should developers not have to worry about being sued because there was a bug unless they've actually affirmatively promised there wouldn't be a bug. Major liability should tie into things application promises and SLAs, which would be more generally negotiated between entities who can reasonably handle the increased information and legal complexity and think it all through.

I do really hope we see some standardization all the way around. It seems like there could be some real win/wins in this area, and that it's not necessarily that politicized either.

There supposedly exists an ideal human, one whom every demagogue on the internet imagines must exist anytime any of a number of subjects is talked about.

This ideal human:

- Reads every terms and conditions agreement, and understands it, for every service they intend to use -- online and in meatspace -- or chooses not to use that service;

- Never drives even a couple of miles an hour over the speed limit or commits any of a number of other minor traffic infractions for which 90% of drivers swear they are never guilty;

- Has taken the time to educate themselves about the various backup strategies available and has selected the correct one for their needs (and read the T&C for it);

- Is aware of every applicable law in their local municipality and follows it to the letter;

- Is always on time;

- Always follows the latest health guidelines for sleep, exercise, and diet, no matter how many times those things change;

- Has taken the time to understand password security and follows all of the current recommended best practices (and has read the T&C for all the software they use for it);

- Always keeps their system and application software exactly up-to-date (always ensuring there is a viable backup first, of course, and restoring that backup as a test, of course, before proceeding with the update);

- Monitors their credit score and carefully follows sound financial planning advice and all applicable tax laws;

- Has learned nearly everything there is to know about their particular vehicle so that they can't be taken advantage of by shady mechanics;

- Always uses whatever pronoun is appropriate for the individual they're addressing.

I have never met this person, but they must exist, because if they didn't, people would start behaving as though all of these expectations, altogether, are totally unreasonable.

I kind of wish this person didn't exist, so we could stop talking about them and instead start talking more honestly about some of the challenges our society faces.

> In fact, I think this is a symptom of the fact that attorneys and legal practitioners are a "protected" class with a relatively high barrier to entry to basic education in their field.

There's essentially no barrier to entry to basic education in the field; there are classes on the basics in most undergraduate institutions (including community colleges)—corporations and contract law (plus elements of some other subfields) often under the banner of “business law”.

PayPal is a company that just needs to go away. They screw people out of their money left and right. And for the cherry on top their ui is complete garbage