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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday April 19 2018, @04:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the RTFTS dept.

There is a browser add-on which summarizes terms of service warnings for web sites requiring an all-or-nothing click-through to use their services. The add-on tosdr uses crowd-sourcing to digest scores of pages into short, concise sentences or paragraphs warning what is hidden behind excessively verbose legalese. The database has been around for years but has recently been converted into a wiki.

What if, before you consented, you could at least read the SparkNotes? That's the goal of ToSDR—short for Terms of Service; Didn't Read—a website that turns lengthy terms of service agreements into bulleted summaries, and then rates those terms from Class A (very good) to Class F (very bad). It functions as a sort of Wikipedia for terms of service agreements. Anyone can submit a bullet point and share their analysis of a service's terms, which get turned into a rating of a site's overall policy. The site, which has existed since 2012 but is relaunching next month on a new platform, hopes to create a broad network of shared knowledge.

Unlike written contracts where it is easy to cross out offending paragraphs and clauses before both parties sign, these online forms are all-or-nothing. In some of the sites with larger network effects, such as Facebook, it might be that such a forced agreement could be construed as extortion.

Sources:
Wired: Welcome to the Wikipedia for Terms of Service Agreements
Boing Boing: Terms of Service; Didn't Read: a browser add-on that warns you about the terrible fine-print you're about to "agree" to


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  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday April 19 2018, @08:49PM (1 child)

    by darkfeline (1030) on Thursday April 19 2018, @08:49PM (#669293) Homepage

    Since the browser addons have a standard open source license, they are absolved of all damages caused by the software, and there are no guarantees that the software does what it claims to do.

    Gotta love no liability clauses.

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Chromium_One on Thursday April 19 2018, @08:57PM

    by Chromium_One (4574) on Thursday April 19 2018, @08:57PM (#669302)

    You know, for a free-to-the-user product that isn't monetizing the user, I believe that "good intentions", "best effort", and a policy of "Hey, contact us and let us know if this needs fixing, any help appreciated" are the best we're going to get.

    To argue the other side, poisoning the data may have some use to a few shifty people. Yay occasional downside of crowdsourcing. Consider fake reviews on Yelp and others, used to boost business or hurt competitors.

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