amichal
Y_Y
I think in such a case (unless there was some context that clearly showed the difference between those two statements) then you as a user would benefit from contra proferentem. This legal principle (which is explicit law in some jurisdictions) says that the contract terms should be interpreted in favour of the party who did not write them.
dimava
Both is right I think
It's just one in coming from EU TOS[1] and another comes from USA TOS[2]
And the website doesn't support that
[1] https://www.tiktok.com/legal/page/eea/terms-of-service/en
[2] https://www.tiktok.com/legal/page/us/terms-of-service/en
actionfromafar
Also not a thing possible to do, depending on jurisdiction.
shadowwwind
True. Currently it's practice at ToS;DR to show the worst version. Usually the one for the USA
serbuvlad
Gread idea. Odd first impression.
Wikipedia has 4 thumbs down 1 thumbs up and is grade B. Tor has 0 thumbs down 3 thumbs up and is grade C.
DuckDuckGo has only 1 thumbs down: "Instead of asking directly, this Service will assume your consent merely from your usage." and is grade B, presumably because of this. Startpage is grade A, has no thumbs down, but going on startpage does not prompt me to agree to anything either.
olivergregory
The grades are explained at the bottom of the page.
Regarding Startpage, It's not mandatory to show the cookie banner if you don't track. Startpage doesn't track you at all, so it's grade A.
Wikipedia has that all the bad things happen to your account except for the tracking, but you can still use Wikipedia without using an account. I agree that it's a B.
I'm not familiar enough with Tor to answer that grade.
danlitt
> The grades are explained at the bottom of the page.
Are they? The table at the bottom page doesn't explain anything - in particular doesn't give any indication why Tor might be ranked below Wikipedia (for instance). How can a service with no mentioned negative qualities have a grade C?
IshKebab
Yeah the grades seem pretty biased. Wikipedia has 4 thumbs down and is grade B, Whatsapp has 2 and is grade D. One of them is even the same as Wikipedia's. Apparently just having "Any liability on behalf of the service is only limited to the fees you paid as a user" (which seems fairly reasonable to me) is enough to go from B to D?
shadowwwind
You only need to accept DuckDuckGo's ToS when you sign up for privacy pro. What the point means is that they can change the ToS and assume consent to the changes when you continue using it, instead if prompting again.
Startpage does not have or need a ToS
Vinnl
(For context, shadowwwind is a contributor to tosdr.)
timcobb
Sweet! One suggestion is to somehow normalize the requirements by company type? Like, for example, PayPal gets a thumbsdown for
> You must provide your identifiable information
but that's reasonable for a company like PayPal?
sieabahlpark
[dead]
amelius
We need browsers where the _user_ can specify their legal terms in the response headers. Let's make this two-sided.
skybrian
In a negotiation, either side can walk away. If the website can’t refuse then it’s not really a negotiation. So how would that work? If you set certain headers, the website blocks you? It doesn’t seem like that would be a popular feature.
It would make more sense as filtering criteria for a search engine.
amelius
Well, we could have organisations like the EFF compose a set of consumer-friendly clauses, which the user can then choose from.
If the website wants to block something the EFF deems a good and reasonable protection for the user, then maybe they should indeed block the request.
synecdoche
ToS are highly unfair, because the company has had a group skilled in legalese draft them over enough time as deemed needed, whereas a layman is supposed to understand and base their next decision on something written in a language hardly understood by almost anyone.
For that reason ToS should be illegal unless, at least, written in layman terms.
cluckindan
Some sites, like Facebook and YouTube are listed as being able to see your browser history. It doesn’t seem to be related to tracking scripts, so how exactly does that work?
TobTobXX
When you click on edit, you can see the specific section of the ToS: https://edit.tosdr.org/points/11339
Apparently this means that YT can acces the synced browser history if you're logged into Chrome.
bsimpson
I will forever remember how my parents, who insisted we should be honest in all situations, also taught us to just click the blue button whenever something wants to be installed.
sieabahlpark
[dead]
j_bum
I’d love to see Kagi on here
Vinnl
ToS;dr is a collaborative effort! Folks can contribute for Kagi at https://edit.tosdr.org/services/11540/.
ColinEberhardt
Great idea - although the website is struggling with comment SPAM https://edit.tosdr.org/points/10493
basedrum
Why does Tor Browser get grade C when it only has green thumbs up?
Vinnl
Just checked with the team (I used to be involved), and apparently the reason is that Tor's policy is too short for the algorithm that turns policy annotations into a grade.
(This also kickstarted a discussion that maybe that warrants a change to the algorithm, so maybe later more.)
garyrob
I propose that it should use a Baysian prior where the background knowledge is assumed to be an A.
While it may be true that most ToS are onerous, suppose we look at a ToS document as a collection of terms of service. It's only the terms of service that cause a removal of rights that would otherwise be assumed. The more terms there are, and the more onerous each one is, the more rights can be removed. But before there are any terms, no rights are removed, so that situation should be an A. Diminished from there, depending on how many terms there are, and each one's onerousness.
woadwarrior01
Tangentially related: FreeOutput[1], which summarizes the copyright ownership of AI generated content from various LLM providers.
butz
Wasn't there some regulation in EU, which forces service owners to make ToS actually readable and understandable?
Puts
GDPR partly covers this since it's stated that the user must get information about how personal data is used in a clear and easy readable form. But I guess, there's some wiggle room how to interpret that. The law actually suggest that the industry could come up with symbols – like on food packaging. Your website could have a bunch of standardized icons in the footer to inform you how data is used, but since we don't have that it seems like the industry didn't like that idea of transparency.
Does a good job of showing how completely unparsable ToS are:
https://tosdr.org/en/service/1448 says both:
"You maintain ownership of your data: This service does not claim ownership over user-generated content or materials, and the user * doesn't need to waive any moral rights* by posting owned content."
and
"You waive your moral rights"
Edit: I have no energy for figuring out which of these statements is more true.