A bipartisan group of lawmakers introduces the TLDR Act, which would require sites and apps to offer easy-to-digest, nutrition label-like summaries of their TOS
Happy Thursday! Below: The FCC proposes new data breach rules for telecom and the White House meets with tech leaders on cyber.
Washington Post
Context & Ripple Effects
The TLDR Act revives a long-running policy push for shorter disclosures: a White House privacy-bill draft had already called for concise explanations of data use and a way to remove information. The proposal applies that design logic to sites’ and apps’ terms of service.
Its label-based framing also aligns with the FCC’s later standardized broadband-label rules, which made price, speed, and network-management disclosures more comparable. The significance is not a new privacy right in the supplied coverage, but an attempt to make contractual terms legible at the interface where users accept them.
First-order effects
Lawmakers sponsoring the TLDR Act put sites and apps on notice that their terms may need a standardized, easy-to-digest summary rather than relying solely on full-length agreements.
Users would receive a more scannable account of the terms they are asked to accept if the proposal becomes law, while platforms would need to translate legal language into a prescribed consumer-facing format.
Second-order effects
Standardized summaries would make terms easier to compare across services, increasing pressure on platforms whose data-use or dispute provisions look less favorable when presented side by side.
The proposal complements the FCC’s label approach: firms facing disclosure rules in different sectors would have stronger incentives to build compliance and consumer-notice processes around standardized formats.
Third-order effects
If disclosure mandates continue to move from policy drafts into enforceable labels, consent architecture may shift from long-form legal notices toward regulated, comparable interfaces.
That shift would make the presentation of terms a more direct regulatory target, though the supplied coverage does not establish whether the TLDR Act will advance.
The trend: Consumer-tech regulation is increasingly treating standardized disclosure design as a tool for making complex service terms and data practices comparable.
This seems like the kind of bare-minimum, common-sense measure that probably could have been passed 10 years ago if Silicon Valley hadn't convinced everyone that all regulation of tech was bad. https://twitter.com/...
It would take *76* work days for the average American to read the terms of service contracts for the websites & apps they use. Companies designed them that way so users “agree” without reading a word. I introduced the TLDR Act with @SenBillCassidy & @SenatorLujan to change that. …
Do lawmakers think that we write terms of service to be extra-long on purpose? Like...we're bored, and we want to confuse people, so we're just gonna throw some bits from Anna Karenina to see if anyone notices? Where's our TLDR Act for real estate contracts? New cars? https://twi…
How about we pass a law requiring lawmakers to post a nutrition label-style summary of what their bills would actually do, and which parts are vaguely unconstitutional? https://twitter.com/...
you don't need a EULA to read a book. you don't need one to use software or drive a car, either. social media does have different considerations. anyway, “private ordering” is overrated
.@SenBillCassidy, @RepLoriTrahan and I want to make complicated terms of service contracts that nobody reads a thing of the past. Companies should be required to make their terms of service contracts more accessible & transparent, giving control back to the consumer. https://twit…
Nobody will read summaries, either. Just like you never read the lengthy contract of 3-point-font when you signed up for a cell phone plan. The right thing to do is for courts to regulate form commercial contracts for substantive reasonableness. https://twitter.com/...
The fact that no one reads terms of service is a problem, sure. But just like Ed Chau's god-awful “Limit terms to 100 words, that'll fix it all!” law, this fixes nothing and helps no one. It's a misguided mess that keeps putting the burden in the wrong place: users.
This is a good step. But the problem remains that many people feel like they can't really opt out of using certain platforms (even if they have problematic terms) because those platforms have become key infrastructure for their communities. https://twitter.com/...
You know who they could have asked on this? ASIDE FROM literally anyone who's written a Terms of Service or literally any privacy expert, they could have asked anyone who's worked on or contributed to @ToSDR, which has tried to do basically this for a decade. It's /fucking hard/.
Potentially a pain in the butt, and won't change ‘beware that fine print’. But I do find Apple's “privacy dashboard” useful when deciding if an app's worth considering, so there *is* that. https://twitter.com/...
No one reads the terms of service. Lawmakers want to fix that with a new ‘TLDR’ bill. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... // As exciting as this is, super tough to see this working in practice. Many times I tried to get lawyers to draft a tl;dr version of the terms of use. Lots o…
Our bipartisan & bicameral legislation gives power back to consumers by requiring that online companies make their terms of service contracts more accessible, transparent & understandable (like this! ⬇️). https://twitter.com/...
That's not to say more transparency is bad, but it's one thing for consumers to look at a label for how much sugar, salt, etc. is in a product. Privacy questions are far more complex, and are legitimately difficult to explain to lay-audiences, especially in a condensed format.
most terms of service / EULAs should not be enforceable in court and apart from that are mostly unnecessary. (but the point of terms isn't always to be legally enforceable but just to tell people how they might get kicked off the service) https://twitter.com/...
TL/DR: Bills that mandate tech companies inform us of how they're going to use our data, abuse our trust, & violate our privacy don't fix the root problem: the USA needs a data protection act & stronger @FTC to enforce it, not a clear TOS. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... cc @…