#user agreements

The best time to read an agreement is before you sign it.

The second best time to read an agreement is when you've encountered a problem.

This came up because we were talking about leases, and a lot of the people who were having problems with their landlords, 1) Never read the lease to begin with, 2) Also did not read the lease after encountering an issue with their landlord.

Now this is not about scolding people with "You should read before you sign," because honestly we all know that, and we've all been there: Life is busy, contracts are long, and by the time you've gotten all the way to signing a lease, user agreement, etc., the logic is usually "Well I don't have any other options/I've gotten all the way here, so why spend time reading it? Not like I can argue with it." That's a fair way to feel. Most of us aren't lawyers anyway, so it's not like the average person would notice a piece in a contract that's actually legally unenforceable, etc.

HOWEVER. What I'm here to tell you is that these types of agreements, especially where they are written by entities that actually have lawyers to do it, are intentionally written to outlast your attention span. They are long on purpose. They are jargony on purpose. The point is to overcome your will to read up front and even after you're having problems, so you'll just give up or give in.

The hack to this is, since the contract is written to outlast a human attention span, reading and following every step of it may very well outlast the attention span of the other party even when they're the one who created it.

Personal example: I had an issue with a print-on-demand site this year over them suspending my account without reason. Here is the series of events:

My account was suspended, and the "reason" was a group of five possible reasons sent to me via email.

None of those reasons seemed to apply, so I appealed, following all the instructions in the appeal portal.

My appeal was rejected, still only narrowing down the "reason" to a list of three possible reasons that did not apply.

I read the user agreement (admittedly for the first time, at least in years). I determined that nothing I did violated the user agreement and hypothesized that I got caught in some kind of automatic spam filter because I was uploading works too quickly (which there are no guidelines about in the user agreement, terms or conditions, or community guidelines).

The user agreement outlined an arbitration process, the first step of which was mailing a written notice of dispute to the company's mailing office on the West Coast. The rest of the steps basically said if we couldn't resolve our dispute via mail or email, I had the right to escalate to a formal dispute with arbitration, and the company would have to send a representative to the state I live in for the arbitration hearing and pay for everything.

About three weeks after mailing the letter, my account was reinstated with an apology.

I followed THE FIRST STEP of their arbitration process, and they gave in pretty much immediately when for nearly a month prior, all I could get was "we're sorry, but your account is not eligible for reinstatement," without acknowledging anything I said or any questions I asked in my repeated attempts to contact them. Just starting the process, indicating that I read the agreement, was enough to get an international company to fold and acknowledge me. They didn't have the patience to go through and pay for arbitration over a mistakenly suspended account.

AND: Once I started posting about this saga on my public art social medias, I started getting messages from other people like "Hey, my account was also suspended for no reason, but I just gave up. What did you do?" Then I would tell them, and they'd still be unwilling to read and pursue things for themselves - they'd ask me what part of the agreement the arbitration process was, etc., and because I try to help out, I'd pick out the relevant pieces for them, but that also highlights my point:

Even when people knew that there was a solid chance that reading and following the dispute process in the user agreement would get them what they wanted, they were still looking for a faster way to get to the end result.

Hey Adobe users.....

Guess what the new user agreement says?

It says they can ACCESS YOUR WORK AND USE IT TO TRAIN THEIR A.I.

this user agreement shit must stop!

If someone tries to say they’ve read the terms of service for every app, program, and website they use, I guarantee either they spend all their free time reading those, or they’re not telling the truth. Cory Doctorow expresses it best:

“When a backlash began, the app vendors and smartphone companies had a rebuttal ready: ‘You agreed to let us do this. We gave you notice of our privacy practices, and you consented.’

“This ‘notice and consent’ model is absurd on its face, and yet it is surprisingly legally robust. In July 2016, US federal appellate courts ruled on two cases that asked whether End User Licenses that no one read and no one understands and no one takes seriously are enforceable. The cases differed a little in their answer, but in both cases, the judges said that they were enforceable at least some of the time (and that violating them can be a felony!). These rulings came down as the entirety of America was consumed with Pokémon Go fever, only to have a few killjoys like me point out that merely by installing the game, all those millions of players have ‘agreed’ to forfeit their right to sue any of Pokémon’s corporate masters should the com­panies breach all that private player data. You do, however, have 30 days to opt out of this forfeiture.

“Notice and consent is an absurd legal fiction. A pair of communications professors published a working paper in 2016 called, ’The Biggest Lie on the Internet: Ignoring the Privacy Policies and Terms of Service Policies of Social Net­working Services.’ The paper details how the profs gave their students, who are studying license agreements and privacy, a chance to beta-test a new social network (this service was fictitious, but the students didn’t know that). To test the network, the students had to create accounts, and were given a chance to review the service’s terms of service and privacy policy, which prominently promised to give all the users’ personal data to the NSA, and demanded the students’ first-born children in return for access to the service. As you may have gathered from the paper’s title, none of the students noticed either fact, and almost none of them even glanced at the terms of service for more than a few seconds.

“Indeed, you can’t examine the terms of service you interact with in any depth - it would take more than 24 hours a day just to figure out what rights you’ve given away that day. But as terrible as notice-and-consent is, at least it pretends that people should have some say in the destiny of the data that evanescences off of their lives as they move through time, space, and information.”

User agreements are the fine print that we all click through without reading. But it's important to be aware of what we're agreeing to when we sign up for online services. User agreements can contain surprising provisions, such as giving the company the right to own your soul.

While it's unrealistic to expect that we'll read every user agreement carefully, there are a few tips to help us avoid the most egregious pitfalls:

Be aware of the length of the user agreement. If it's more than a few pages long, it's likely that it contains some hidden gems.

Look for any unusual provisions, such as the one that Squaremouth included in its travel insurance policy.

Be suspicious of any user agreement that is deliberately trying to trick you. For example, Game Station's April Fool's Day user agreement was a clear attempt to trick people into giving up their souls.

If you're unsure about anything in a user agreement, it's always best to err on the side of caution and not agree.

It's also important to remember that user agreements are not always in our favor. Platforms often have the upper hand when it comes to negotiating user agreements, and they may use this to their advantage. For example, some user agreements give the company the right to collect and use your personal information without your consent.

this user agreement shit must stop!

nobody reads those extremely long, one-sided contracts that app publishers push on people at the moment that they have no time to read them

#userExperience

#userAgreements

#humanekind

#aBetterWay

1. We promise never to contact you at all under any circumstances, other than maybe if we as a company have been drinking and it is late at night and we start to dwell on lost marketing opportunities and the great sales of the past that our current merchandising never seems to live up to. It is possible that we may text you then to limply say 'what's up?'; an action that we will miserably dwell on the next morning as we try to charm our corporate hangover away with bad coffee.

2. Information is very important to us. Did you know that crickets have ears on their knees? That's your information now, we've bequeathed it to you. Look after it carefully.

3. Well, you have been careless with your data, haven't you? Now, we as a company care very deeply about the security of your data. Dare we say the sanctity of your data. That is why we realise the only way to keep your data safe is to take it away from you. We'll be starting with the usual: mother's maiden name, first pet and so on. Remember them? I didn't think so.

4. Our privacy policy is that, once you have signed up to the service, we will follow you around forever in the form of a grey ghostly figure with great staring eyes and a sombre froglike mouth, watching your every move and silently judging them against a moral system that will always remain a mystery to you. We apply this policy without discrimination to all users and, as a supernatural service, I'm sure you will agree that it is outside the remit of earthly law.

5. Let’s put it this way: we recognise the importance to our business plan of us continuing to send you letters which, although you say you do not want, you will nevertheless dutifully scroll through to see if there is something important at the end and maybe idly click on a link if there is something you are supposed to be doing next that you would rather put off.

6. Our privacy policy is that we will turn on the tap or hum or something while you are in the toilet because we know sound carries in here, if you could do the same for us that would be much appreciated, you wouldn't think a company would need to use the toilet but it's one of the great drawbacks of corporate personhood, don't ask.

7. Continuing to use this kitchen means that you agree to have cookies placed on your device. If your device cannot eat cookies why did you bring it in here. This is a cookie kitchen. We do not serve robots.

8. I'm sure you'll appreciate we can't release our privacy policy to just anyone. Come to the Jolly Woodpecker at 11 and ask at the back bar for Dave. The woman who trips over your foot will have left a note in your pocket. If you agree then mumble a confused apology at her for leaving your foot in the way. If not then we're afraid under data protection legislation we will not be able to send you on any more missions.