Terms of Service…or Terms of Compliance?
Terms of service exist all around us. They exist both in digital and non-digital formats, but for the sake of this article, I won’t get into philosophizing over the non-digital and invisible ones.
When we’re presented with digital terms of service, they’re often compressed into a tiny box of tiny text that would take forever to read and scroll through. Or it’s a link that leads to a page of lengthy paragraphs and intimidating, barely comprehensible wording. It often all seems like the same kind of thing. You glance at it, maybe scroll a bit, but then you click the “accept” button waiting for you so that you can go ahead and do whatever it is you were attempting to do in the first place.
So nice of them to wrap it up for you, right? It’s quick and easy, and you figure, it’s all the same, nothing I haven’t checked out before. In fact, they’re doing you a favor by letting you get on with using their product so fast!
Yay!….not so much.
Terms of service can be fairly terrifying. Even as I was reading Medium’s terms of service and privacy policy, my brain was already working on figuring out ways to get around their self-admitted inevitable ongoing collection of data. Okay, they’re tracking my IP address…yikes, I’ve thought about finding a way to hide that, I DEFINITELY want to do that now…they might collect data about me from other social networks?! That is sick. Note to self: never, ever log in to Medium through a third-party platform. Or anywhere else.
Some of what the companies discuss in the terms of service is actually important to maintain. Like ensuring security. Or fixing errors. Things like that.
More of it, however, is concerning:
“We share personal information with our lawyers and other professional advisors where necessary to obtain advice or otherwise protect and manage our business interests.” UM.
“We may share personal information in connection with, or during negotiations concerning, any merger, sale of company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business by another company.” WHAT.
“Please note that if you choose to delete your account, we may continue to retain certain information about you as required by law or for our legitimate business purposes.” Well then.
“When you interact with an Embed, it can send information about your interaction to the hosting third party just as if you were visiting the third party’s site directly. For example, when you load a Medium post page with a YouTube video Embed and watch the video, YouTube receives information about your activity, such as your IP address and how much of the video you watch. Medium does not control what information third parties collect through Embeds or what they do with the information. This Privacy Policy does not apply to information collected through Embeds. The privacy policy belonging to the third party hosting the Embed applies to any information the Embed collects, and we recommend you review that policy before interacting with the Embed.” Okayyyy. Good to know.
One thing that I often see with companies with paid membership accounts, like Amazon or Spotify, is automatic charging of a paid subscription after a free trial.
Part of Spotify’s terms of service states: “By providing such details you agree that we may automatically begin charging you for the Paid Subscription on the first day following the end of the Trial on a recurring monthly basis or another interval that we disclose to you in advance. IF YOU DO NOT WANT THIS CHARGE, YOU MUST CANCEL THE APPLICABLE PAID SUBSCRIPTION BEFORE THE END OF THE TRIAL […]”
That feels to me like they’re going behind your back. Of course, you agreed to it, it’s stated in the terms of service…but it’s so easy to pass by. It’s so easy to skip reading the terms, because who wants to take 40 minutes reading them?!
When I read through Instagram’s terms of service, I found the language fascinating. While yes, there was plenty of “legal speak,” there was also this surprisingly welcoming, easy-to-understand wording:
“People are different. We want to strengthen your relationships through shared experiences you actually care about. So we build systems that try to understand who and what you and others care about, and use that information to help you create, find, join, and share in experiences that matter to you. Part of that is highlighting content, features, offers, and accounts you might be interested in, and offering ways for you to experience Instagram, based on things you and others do on and off Instagram.”
“We use data from Instagram and other Facebook Company Products, as well as from third-party partners, to show you ads, offers, and other sponsored content that we believe will be meaningful to you. And we try to make that content as relevant as all your other experiences on Instagram.”
Hmmmm.
This feels very sneaky to me. They’re trying to convince us that they have our best interests at heart, that they want us to connect with each other, and that’s their primary concern. They’re using words like “strengthen,” “shared experiences,” “understand,” “relationships,” “create,” “meaningful,” “relevant,” and “help.” Those are all words that we typically think of as generally positive. However, there were a few phrases that caught my eye.
One, “based on things you and others do on and off Instagram.” On AND off? I’m assuming that they know what we do off Instagram because that’s often what we post about. That feels manipulative to me that they would “read” or “scan” that information and suggest content on that basis.
Two, “We use data from Instagram and other Facebook Company Products [and] third-party partners to show you ads, offers, and other sponsored content we believe will be meaningful to you.” This is a very neatly constructed sentence with a bow on top. The beginning simply mentions data, then gets into the purpose (showing ads, offers, sponsored content), and finally concludes with assuring us that it’s because they are thinking of us. That ending makes it easier to forget about the first part of the sentence. It sounds like they’re distracting us from what they’re doing by telling us that they’re doing it for a good reason, they’re doing it for us. They’re using our natural human desires for connection and to believe the best of others to lure us in, soothe our wariness, and simply accept their terms and move on.
Often, these companies depend on us to NOT read the Terms of Service so that we won’t ask questions or kick up a fuss and refuse to use (or pay for) their service. In order to use the service, you have to agree with what they put forward, and what better way to get you to do that than make it fairly difficult and time-consuming to read along with conveniently placing a button or two at the bottom of the page to give you an easy out? Terms of service could very well be renamed “terms of compliance.”
However, as I acknowledged before, not everything in companies’ terms of service is bad. For example, this is part of Instagram’s terms of service: “We develop and use tools and offer resources to our community members that help to make their experiences positive and inclusive, including when we think they might need help. We also have teams and systems that work to combat abuse and violations of our Terms and policies, as well as harmful and deceptive behavior. We use all the information we have-including your information-to try to keep our platform secure.”
It’s good to know that companies do have some guidelines in place that protect certain rights and proceedings—I mean, they could face legal consequences if not—but it’s also important to keep in mind that not everything is as private as it may seem. Even if you have a private account, you aren’t immune to a company’s collection of data according to their terms of service.
It can be scary to find out what kinds of monsters are lurking in the dark, especially if we hadn’t known they were there before. But I think we need to be aware (to an extent) so that we can know what’s reasonable to expect and find ways to keep us safe.
