- I don't think legalese is the issue. Even if you wrote terms in plain English they would still be at a similar length if you wanted to capture the same content of the base terms, and people would still not read them. I don't think there is a high proportion of people who are put off by legalese but would read terms if they were in plain English
- the article has a GDPR bent. Certainly when it comes to uses of personal data, that should form a bigger part of the sign-up experience and be separated out from the main terms.
- when you are looking at general terms & conditions outside of privacy, European consumer law and I imagine most consumer law protects customers from unreasonable actions by corporations toward consumers. It allows the user to assume the company will behave reasonably towards the consumer, and is arguably the appropriate remedy to cure the issue of over-long terms & conditions.
- There is of course limited scope to this and there will be a range of transactions where you are not acting as a consumer and are expected to thoroughly understand the full implications of the transaction you enter into.
- the reckoning in the article is already one partially addressed by the above steps at least in the European Union around consumer law protections, and requirements on the data protection side to call out data uses in the sign-up process rather than bury them in the terms.
- I don't think legalese is the issue. Even if you wrote terms in plain English they would still be at a similar length if you wanted to capture the same content of the base terms, and people would still not read them. I don't think there is a high proportion of people who are put off by legalese but would read terms if they were in plain English
- the article has a GDPR bent. Certainly when it comes to uses of personal data, that should form a bigger part of the sign-up experience and be separated out from the main terms.
- when you are looking at general terms & conditions outside of privacy, European consumer law and I imagine most consumer law protects customers from unreasonable actions by corporations toward consumers. It allows the user to assume the company will behave reasonably towards the consumer, and is arguably the appropriate remedy to cure the issue of over-long terms & conditions.
- There is of course limited scope to this and there will be a range of transactions where you are not acting as a consumer and are expected to thoroughly understand the full implications of the transaction you enter into.
- the reckoning in the article is already one partially addressed by the above steps at least in the European Union around consumer law protections, and requirements on the data protection side to call out data uses in the sign-up process rather than bury them in the terms.