Very few of us, if anyone, actually spend time reading the Terms of Service (ToS) agreements for the myriad web services we use every day. A group of US lawmakers has introduced a bill to do something about this, and domain experts think it’s a good start.
If the 'TLDR Act' passes, a website's 'Terms of Service' page could actually be useful
The bill, aptly named the Terms-of-service Labeling, Design, and Readability (TLDR) Act, would force online apps and services to condense their legal language into digestible chunks, with all the meaningful details and none of the unnecessary fluff.
“Hiding unfavorable terms in legalese is something we’ve all gotten used to, but that doesn’t make it right or good practice,” Trevor Morgan, product manager at comforte AG, shared with Lifewire via email. “Kudos to the legislators who are looking out for the average user.”
Transparency advocates have long campaigned to make the Terms of Service fair and understandable to the average citizen. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) even goes so far as to call them Terms of Use.
