> Waving a 2-inch-thick printed version of the social network’s user agreement, Senator Lindsey Graham quoted a line from the first page, then intoned: “I’m a lawyer, and I have no idea what that means.”
1) Two inch thick I've read some pretty long books in my time but that takes the cake. Most people these days don't even have enough attention span to read a complete internet article. How do you expect them to plough through hundreds of pages of legalese?
2) “I’m a lawyer, and I have no idea what that means.” Do I even need to say any more?
* FB is doing their absolute best to make sure no "user" understands what they have agreed to
* writing the law in "plain english" is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of in my life. See the multi million dollar lawsuit this year about whether a missing Oxford comma changed wage rules for a class of truck drivers. Any attempt to write law in plain english introduces giant ambiguities [1].
Right here, clear as day: "We collect information from or about the computers, phones, or other devices where you install or access our Services, depending on the permissions you’ve granted"
Also notice that if they have that data, you explicitly gave permission to access phone/SMS data in the app install process; i.e., you granted those permissions.
> ...steal...
Again, that's the problem! Facebook didn't STEAL that data. They took it with your permission. And they were actually very clear in their policies about the fact that they could take pretty much anything you gave them device premissions to access.
This is NOT a "users can't understand legalese" issue. It's very clear from the above sentence in the data policy that Facebook has the right to record arbitrary shit off of your phone/computer.
This IS a "users don't care and don't have any data clawback rights" issue. Or perhaps a "users are too trusting" issue. But any high schooler could interpret the above sentence as meaning that Facebook does, technically, have the right to collect any information from your phone if you give device permissions.
The distinction is important because it determines appropriate solutions. The solution is NOT making ToS easier to read. The solution is stronger consumer data rights (aka a mechanism to clawback data after the fact) and better consumer education (aka be paranoid)
If you think that merely making ToS easier to read and understand will substantially change consumer behavior, you're in for lots of disappointment.
Care to propose a rephrasing that's more clear? If the average person can't understand the meaning of that sentence, the only real solution is to improve K-12 English teaching.
> and wasn't clear to virtually anyone who agreed to it
Virtually everyone who agreed to it never bothered to even try to read the policy in the first place. So, really, what difference does that make?
Again, the fundamental point is that chasing ToS clarity/readability/length is a losing battle. The majority of consumers don't care enough to read, no matter how simple you make things. Improving this metric won't make a difference. This issue is a red herring. Focus efforts elsewhere: consumer education and consumer rights.
I agree Lindsay Graham is a skilled orator and politician. But if he blew up the font size until those pages required two inches of 8x11 paper, he must have just terrible eyesight ;-)
Also, neither of those documents is terribly difficult to understand. Like... where, specifically, is Graham getting horribly confused?! Point to the concrete line in one of those two links that requires something beyond a high school education!
Now, I'm sure there's nuance I don't pick up on. But I definitely feel I can understand the ToS and privacy policy without consulting a lawyer.
I don't think some of the terms are fair. But that's a consumer rights issue, not a "legalese" issue.
More generally, on two occasions I've had to get in front of a real judge in a "real" courtroom and make an argument based upon some written piece of law I had to look up and interpret myself. In both cases, I was able to successfully convince a judge that I was on the right side of the law without the help of a lawyer. I'm certainly not saying that's always possible, but I do believe there is a lot of "learned helplessness" when it comes to digging through legeal code or contracts and reading legalese. It's a PITA sometimes, but in many many cases it doesn't require years of training.
> Waving a 2-inch-thick printed version of the social network’s user agreement, Senator Lindsey Graham quoted a line from the first page, then intoned: “I’m a lawyer, and I have no idea what that means.”
1) Two inch thick I've read some pretty long books in my time but that takes the cake. Most people these days don't even have enough attention span to read a complete internet article. How do you expect them to plough through hundreds of pages of legalese?
2) “I’m a lawyer, and I have no idea what that means.” Do I even need to say any more?