Right? A “contract” that only one party needs to abide by is not a contract… it’s an abusive relationship.

> Right? A “contract” that only one party needs to abide by is not a contract… it’s an abusive relationship.

I think you're absolutely right morally, but I think you've made a pretty important technical error: they're not abusive because "only one party needs to abide...by the contract", they're abusive because only one party can unilaterally change the deal. The companies that make these "contracts" can actually follow them, but since they can change them at a whim, it only really binds the other party.

There are plenty of other abusive aspects besides the fact that they can be changed unilaterally.

What I really don't understand is how it's supposed to be a fundamental part of contract law that there's a "meeting of the minds" where both parties agree to the same thing, and there are these click-through agreements that nobody reads, and everybody knows that nobody reads them, but they're still enforceable. I get why there needs to be a general presumption that you've actually read a contract that you've signed, otherwise you'd be flooded with people saying "actually I didn't read that" to get out of contracts they don't like anymore. But that presumption doesn't make any sense when one party doesn't read the contract, the other party knows nobody reads it, and everybody knows nobody reads it, but we all just sort of pretend.

I particularly love the pretend play of software forcing you to scroll the dozens of pages of contract text all the way to the bottom before the Accept button is enabled. Because obviously the reason I didn't read through the entirety of these eulas before is because I wasn't sure of how scrolling works.

The only way they should be enforceable is if they use that scrolling trick, then quiz you on all the terms (with at least multiple choice), every time the TOS is updated.

Despite sounding absurd I think that would actually work really well. It would make it functionally impossible to include arcane BS without driving off customers while also filtering out people too stupid to be trusted with any sort of online account.

I'm reminded of Mitch Hedberg's bit about getting a receipt when buying a donut. "I don't need a receipt for the donut. I'll just give you the money, and you give me the doughnut. End of transaction!"

Why do we need massive TOS for stuff? I'll just give you the money, and you give me the service. End of transaction!

Presumably because an ongoing service isn't a clean exchange of physical goods. It's more analogous to a gym membership which definitely does come with a contract.

By eating this donut you agree that we are not responsible for any health problems that might result, either directly or indirectly.

This is true and for this reason sometimes TOS are not very effective in court.

Wonder how a court would treat it if users just reply to the email updating the terms of service on our behalf and claiming that they have accepted the terms by not doing anything. (Eg add stringent PII protection, no tracking requirements…)

My guess is that you would probably get kicked off the service if anyone reads your TOS, so make sure to add onerous cancellation charges due to the user in your updated TOS.

In the US at least, the courts would probably side with the big corporation, since doing so seems to be the legal precedent.

I could imagine an AI sidekick that does all this work for you, and always has the last word because it'll never give up.

A place like Meta or Microsoft would tell you to pound sand, but an aligned army of collective-bargaining agents might succeed in removing a specific term from a smaller service.

But generally the ToS has few, if any, requirements for the company. Usually the ToS is just a list of demands they make of the user in exchange for the service. But the company usually reserves the right to terminate service for any reason, as well as change the serice in any way they want, and change the terms of the "contract" at any time.

Ok that's no way to build a functional society, though. Humans are certainly not the entities in this conflict with the time or resources to go to court.

>If the company violates their ToS, you can take them to court (or arbitration).

This is my favorite...how exactly can I monitor compliance? No evidence of non-compliance - get tossed out of court. No court order for discovery - no ability to monitor/gather evidence compliance.

The idea that this is even a potential for mutuallity on a TOS is just farcical.

What happens when Ford updates the ToS on my vehicle (via an OTA update) and I cannot see the backup camera until I "accept"?

(Insert about 1000 other examples of very awkward ToS updates)

You refuse the update and continue using the car with the features you paid for. The ToS agreement comes before the update, not after.

Often I see a popup to accept TOS after the update, which was run without me agreeing to anything.

At which time the company has unilaterally denied my access to something I already paid for without seeking my affirmative consent.

In theory I could stop whatever I'm doing, go email the company a brief to the point letter indicating they've broken their ToS and are unacceptably impairing my ability to use my property under the contract that I did agree to, and giving them an opportunity to amend their problem and give me a rollback path.

Realistically the outcome of this is a brushoff and needing to file a consumer protection complaint or get a lawyer.

If the feature is something like "my car" I can't afford that opportunity cost and am coerced into accepting their contract by the way they presented the amended terms.

I figure ToS for physical devices should be blanket outlawed. They're fraught enough for purely online services. Physical devices keep all of that baggage then add additional questions about whether or not I own physical objects that I purchased.

So just endless account churn?

Good luck with that, buddy. Let's see what kind of shithole society you build with this sort of worldview

The difference is that a social contract is a concept and not literal contract.

The actual reality behind "the social contract" is simply that people have the capability to act in ways that can and do affect other people. Because of this, most people find that it's beneficial to moderate our actions in relation to other people based on their preferences.

I'm referring to very real obligations that we are all held to under the justification of "the social contract" such as taxation and being drafted into military service, not social niceties.

We are held to these obligations as seriously and as legally as we are held to real contracts, but unlike the bedrock that constitutes the basis for the legitimacy of all real contracts, these obligations are imposed upon us with no opportunity for consideration, consent, or rejection.

That’s not the social contract, that’s the dual contracts of residency (protection from fellow residents) and citizenship (protection from foreign elements). You have the opportunity of consent; on your majority you can leave the country for another that’ll have you. There’s a cost to it, but it’s fairly minimal in most places.

That there costs and requirements imposed by a refusal to consent means that your consent or lack thereof is subject to coercion, rendering the arrangement non-consensual.

This argument would be valid if you could renounce US citizenship without first producing another citizenship. But it's not, and you can't. I never asked for a US citizenship, I don't want a US citizenship, and yet I'm bound by it and not free to revoke it.

This citizenship situation is more analogous to a slaveholder telling one of their slaves that they are technically free, because they are welcome to leave once they produce documented proof of ownership by another, different slaveholder. The slave is no sense actually free, despite the misleading, bad-faith assertions of the slaveholder and those who recognize the slaveholder's framework as inherently legitimate.

Imagine waking up at a car dealership that tells you that you MUST pay interest on a car whether you take possession of it or not, despite you never having signed any kind of contract with them, but they tell you that you are still free and nothing is wrong with the arrangement because they will let you off the hook for paying them as long as you can provide proof that you're bound to pay interest on another dealership's car instead. If you try to refuse paying the interest on the car you don't want and never agreed to buy, they will send a team of gunmen to your house in the middle of the night, throw a flashbang through your window, chain you up, and drag you to a cage they lock you in. They insist that the whole arrangement is perfectly fine because the people in the car dealership took a vote where they agreed to force you to be bound by those terms, and that's all the justification they feel they need.

Now imagine the same thing, but in addition to paying interest on the car you didn't want and never agreed to buy, you're also bound to help murder people at other car dealerships, too, at the discretion and whim of the car dealership you're currently being extorted by.

That doesn't sound completely insane to you?

FYI you can absolutely renounce citizenship without having another one handy. the us will simply extract extreme punishments on you for doing so—for most people it's simply not worth it.

This is factually incorrect in the United States. You cannot renounce your citizenship without producing evidence of another citizenship - that is a statutory requirement, alongside exit taxes, to renounce your US citizenship.

That's not the social contract. That's the government trying to trick you into thinking bombing Iran is part of the social contract.