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A comment on Nobody reads privacy policies, senator wants lawmakers to stop pretending we do. Parent comment

Re:Nobody reads privacy policies, senator wants lawmakers to... by btilly on Thursday June 18, 2020 @03:24PM (#23566743)
As I commented elsewhere, all that it would take to fix this is a precedent or law saying that, "Any consumer contract with a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of over 8 shall be unenforceable because the average consumer cannot be expected to have understood what they were agreeing to."
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Re:Nobody reads privacy policies, senator wants lawmakers to... by nickff on Thursday June 18, 2020 @04:47PM (#23567835)
You're really begging the question here. Why should we all follow your whim? Is there any reason at all, other than that it makes sense to you?
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Re:Nobody reads privacy policies, senator wants lawmakers to... by btilly on Thursday June 18, 2020 @05:13PM (#23568112)
Yes, there is a very clear reason. I've stated it elsewhere but I will state it again.

Under common law, there is no legal contract without a meeting of minds. There can be no meeting of minds without comprehension. Per studies of reading abilities, only 2% of Americans read at a college level. (See https://www.wyliecomm.com/2019/03/us-literacy-rate/ for a source.) Therefore such contracts should not be legally enforceable on the other 98% of Americans.

This reasoning applies only to contracts where members of the general public were expected to review the contract unassisted. By contrast in a business contract where both sides retained legal counsel, the complexity of the language is not prima facie evidence that the contract was unlikely to be understood.

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Re:Nobody reads privacy policies, senator wants lawmakers to... by SkyBelow on Thursday June 18, 2020 @05:08PM (#23568062)
Because people generally find that informed consent is the only consent that counts. If someone cannot read a contract, how can they give informed consent to it?

If we decide that uninformed consent is still consent, we open a significant problem. And if we try to patch it by selectively applying the standard, we introduce arbitrariness which is an even larger problem.

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