Terms of Service

It is widely understood that very few people read the terms of service before clicking “I Accept” when signing up for new things. A lot of times you are agreeing to more than you would like to simply because you are too lazy to read the terms of service. This was shown in the two social experiments that we watched/listened to this week. People were agreeing to adopt a rescue dog, give away their firstborn, and give them the shirt off their back without even reading it first. I think this could happen to anyone because nobody has time to read the terms of service of anything. The documents are always insanely long. I am unsure if this is done with the intention to make them impossible to read, but nobody wants to read forty pages of legal terms and jargon. I think that terms of service should be made a lot more readable and condensed so it’s more accessible for people to read.. In Medium’s terms of service you are granting them access to royalty free use of anything you post to their site. I could see that going very badly for some people who make money off of their content. TikTok has a similar clause saying they basically own any content you post on their site. It also says you cannot suit them for any trouble you get into when posting content or using their site. They are “held harmless”. I think some people get in trouble when they don’t read the terms of service, and it’s really good practice to read them before agreeing to them. Unfortunately, I am not sure if getting rid of terms of service agreements are possible. I think it’s necessary from a legality standpoint. On the other hand, maybe it would be possible for there to be a key feature thing on the front page that describes the main things that you are agreeing to in simple terms.