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

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91–100 of 191 posts

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

#91
post #87
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Catch 22: first agree to the Microsoft GitHub ToS. Or you can use a friendlier service like the one provided by Codeberg. https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/what-is-codeberg/#...

What is this then? https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/src/branch/main/TermsOfUse...

Everything has a terms of use. Codeberg is still way better for privacy and freedom.

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

#93
post #85

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.

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.

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

#94

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.

More or less you should assume that any consumer contract promises you exactly the minimum allowable within the framework of applicable laws. That is the intent. Practically what this means is that it is useless to negotiate with big companies or really even read their terms (unless you have skills to spot errors) - the best one can do is support campaigns for expanded privacy laws, consumer rights etc.

We're in really horrible territory and it's getting worse.

c.f. the whole "video calls to train their AI at Zoom" (later: "unless you opt out", sorta) pullava ...

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

#95
post #85

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.

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.

These are most likely not legally binding in the UK as consumer contracts and notices as a whole have to be fair (transparent, in good faith and intelligible) to consumers under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

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

#97

There was a recent ruling on EU-US Data Privacy regulations https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...

What does this mean for customers of Meta, Microsoft, and PayPal? Are we consenting to having our data more carefully handled?

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

#98
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.

These are most likely not legally binding in the UK as consumer contracts and notices as a whole have to be fair (transparent, in good faith and intelligible) to consumers under the Consumer Rights Act 2015.

Same in Germany. There was an interesting case against WhatsApp banning a user for using a third-party app, which WhatsApp argued was against the ToS but the court ruled that the user could not have expected this to result in account termination as using third-party clients was perfectly acceptable practice for similar apps and the user was not explicitly warned this would happen.

Basically you can't sneak gotchas into a ToS, you have to make sure users know they're violating a rule. Ironically this is unlike actual laws where ignorance is not an excuse even if the law is weird and unexpected.

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

#99
post #23
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can build this with what Github offers for free to open source projects.

I like where this discussion is headed. Scrape the ToS and keep a record of that. Are ToS's copywrited?

Yes, legal documents have copyright. This also means you can't take shortcuts by copying an existing privacy policy or ToS instead of writing your own unless you have their copyright holder's permission (which likely isn't even the person/company itself unless it was written by an in-house legal department). This also means you are likely violating copyright if you publish a contract you signed -- although you can of course summarize or rephrase it unless there is a valid NDA (most aren't).

So technically scraping and republishing old ToS'es would be a copyright violation. You might have a case for fair use but then it becomes difficult to monetize the service.

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

#100
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is your work account then switching is down to your employer and they probably have a legal dept to understand all ToS anyway. But any ToS change shouldn't affect you much because you shouldn't be using it for personal stuff.

I don't think the venn diagram of companies using outlook/office365 and companies with a well resourced legal department has as much overlap as one might hope

I'd expect the set of companies with a well resourced legal department to be almost fully contained in the set of companies using outlook/office365.

What else is there for corporate email?

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