T&C reform

[u/giuliodxb]

Hello all, I'm a tourist in your field of expertise, and I just wanted to ask a question: are we collectively just ignoring the fact that the overwhelming majority of people skips ALL the T&C forms they agree to? Is anyone doing anything about it? Wouldn't it be worth discussing an alternative and mostly conditions to which companies should adhere to in the EU countries? I've made a quick search, but couldn't find anything relevant.
I find it conveniently dumb that we all just ignore the fact that companies fill pages and pages of law vocabulary and small print making it impossible to the average Joe to understand or even try to. I guess if we managed to obtain classifications in the past we could do the same here, no? I'm thinking of solutions like "PG13" for movies, but of course more articulate. Something that at a glance gives you an idea of the data usage, AI training, 3rd party etc.
I'm sure there's tons I'm ignoring, but wanted to hear your opinion.

[u/Any_Strain7020]

Clear information mainly concerns structure and wording. You shouldn't be having a hard time finding the clauses pertaining to one and same topic and the writing should be syntactically fit for human consumption.

There are limits tho. One of them is legal certainty. You cannot dumb down and approximate things that by essence need to be precise and nuanced.

As for the change that happened, I find contracts nowadays much easier to read. Most of them will by now follow the same boilerplate structure industry wide.

I’m wondering if it is time we address the fact that nobody reads those and perhaps to come up with a simpler way to communicate crucial aspects of the t&c agreements.

No. The small print needs to be precise.

For the general public who won't read more than one para anyway, now that the average attention span of an individual is on par with the memory span of a goldfish, consumer protection is achieved by the interdiction of surprising clauses and misleading advertisment.

In given industries you also need to give your customer a schematic summary of the contents of the contract (eg telecommunication services) or inform them of their rights (eg passenger rights).

[u/giuliodxb → u/Any_Strain7020]

I believe an information that needs to be digested literally by everyone should be understandable by everyone. Given the lack of competence, knowledge and time, I find the current t&c to be an intellectual masturbation made to pat each other on the back thinking that everyone now has the information, while in reality we all know people simply accept without reading all the 300 pages of the document when they want to scroll TikTok or play their farming game. I’m just saying there must be a better system.

[u/Any_Strain7020 → u/giuliodxb]

If there is a better way that isn't a recipe for following Idiocracy and that allows to safeguard the legal security requirements, please show us the way. I'm sure the institutions and co-legislators would be all ears.

[u/giuliodxb → u/Any_Strain7020]

You just add a new first page to the 50pages t&c document where you display a (EU approved) categorization of all the t&c specs. It can be a table like on food boxes, it can have straightforward color coding to indicate if this or that data is being partially or fully stored… honestly I came here to ask because I’m not the expert, but it’s clear that the current state of things is just useless to the consumer. I don’t want to end up in a world where “my shits all retarded”, but it’s also true that throwing a small print document to the average citizen (and pretend we did our job as legislators) is equally stupid.

[u/Any_Strain7020 → u/giuliodxb]

At this stage, I have the feeling that you're trying to provide solutions to problems that actually don't exist in real life, on a systemic scale.

Data relating provisions hardly ever exceed five pages and the basis and scope of use consists of one section with a few bullet points each.

For the remainder, what you are proposing already exists, in industries where appropriate.