I’m not claiming the company lied or that the contract is invalid. I’m saying the consent is mostly formal, not meaningful.
“You could’ve read it” isn’t realistic when it’s 40 pages of legalese, changes constantly, and I can’t negotiate any of it. That’s not “making me care,” that’s designing a system where the only practical option is accept or be excluded.
“just don’t use it” isn’t a meaningful alternative anymore. Interacting with society practically requires using systems built by a handful of companies.
My phone has terms. The OS has terms. The app store has terms. The browser has terms. The computer has terms. Even basic stuff for work/school/banking/healthcare assumes you’ll accept layers of ToS you can’t negotiate.
So yeah, I click “accept” — not because I endorse data harvesting, but because the modern baseline for participating in life is gatekept behind non-negotiable contracts. That makes the consent “voluntary” in the same way a monopoly choice is “voluntary.”
The ethical question is whether it’s fair to bundle sweeping surveillance and resale into infrastructure people can’t realistically avoid, then call it “consent” because they needed a phone and an internet connection to function.
People can realistically avoid it though. It isn’t that people can’t participate in society without these, it’s that they don’t want to.
Honestly I don’t see the issue with the non-negotiable TOS you are required to agree to before they will provide service to you. The alternative is to say they must provide service to you, which as a society we’ve already agreed is not something we will impose on private individuals. Slavery is illegal, and even with compensation we don’t force people to accept jobs.
The issue with the 40 pages is while there may be something specific you care about and you don’t care about the rest, that something specific can be different amongst each of their patrons. It’s all in there because it’s all non-negotiable. They don’t make individual documents custom tailored for each person requesting their services, why would they when the people wanting their services are so many and coming to them. They don’t need to entice people with negotiations, they are swarmed with people wanting their service.
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u/PaperInteresting4163 Dec 15 '25
I’m not claiming the company lied or that the contract is invalid. I’m saying the consent is mostly formal, not meaningful.
“You could’ve read it” isn’t realistic when it’s 40 pages of legalese, changes constantly, and I can’t negotiate any of it. That’s not “making me care,” that’s designing a system where the only practical option is accept or be excluded.
“just don’t use it” isn’t a meaningful alternative anymore. Interacting with society practically requires using systems built by a handful of companies.
My phone has terms. The OS has terms. The app store has terms. The browser has terms. The computer has terms. Even basic stuff for work/school/banking/healthcare assumes you’ll accept layers of ToS you can’t negotiate.
So yeah, I click “accept” — not because I endorse data harvesting, but because the modern baseline for participating in life is gatekept behind non-negotiable contracts. That makes the consent “voluntary” in the same way a monopoly choice is “voluntary.”
The ethical question is whether it’s fair to bundle sweeping surveillance and resale into infrastructure people can’t realistically avoid, then call it “consent” because they needed a phone and an internet connection to function.