I actually don’t even think there should be contracts, unless they can be cut down to a few paragraphs. Because nothing longer than that will be read by 99% of consumers.

Merely providing a bullet point summary of the contract (as I’ve seen some do, iirc GoG.com is one) is not enough—those bullet points would need to actually become the contract of record.

There is no reason the absence of contracts should lead to a breakdown of the tech industry. Tech companies are already protected by extremely generous copyright laws. Maybe they wouldn’t be able to collect everyone’s data all the time, but that’s a good thing.

I can’t speak as much to other industries because I know less about them. But I think e.g. landlords have a reasonable expectation that renters do read their contracts. I know I read my lease—that seems like a normal, reasonable thing to do. Reading a software ToS or Privacy Policy is, by contrast, exceptionally abnormal.