Terms of service are written to be understandable by lawyers, not average end-users. At this point, understanding every terms of service, privacy policy, etc. presented by every piece of software, website, etc. encountered by an average user would require them to spend hours per week on it. This is assuming that they even have the language skills necessary to decipher the document (think of non-native English speakers, people without higher education, and so on.)

Creative Commons was on the right track with their human-readable licenses, see e.g. this example [1]. Apple is on the right track with their App Store "nutrition labels" [2]. This is what we need for people to make informed decisions. For physical objects like a Kindle, I believe such "nutrition labels" should ideally be put on the box (physical store) and website (online stores), so the consumer is aware before they go home and turn on the device (this makes it easier to compare the Kindle to a Boox or Nook at the store).

[1]: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

[2]: https://mashable.com/article/apple-privacy-nutrition-labels-...

ToS are effectively useless for this purpose.

If the industry moved to a standardized disclosure form (e.g. something like the HUD-1 [1] in real estate sales), people would stop complaining about this.

[1] https://www.hud.gov/sites/documents/1.PDF

1. Nobody actually reads Terms of Service (well, governments and some major businesses do, but 99,99% of regular users don't).

2. Nobody reads them because most of the time they are explicitly user hostile, I'm pretty sure they are designed to prevent users from reading them.

Yes! Even when I try to read the terms of service, I find them hard to understand. I feel bad because it’s sort of shame on me for agreeing to stuff blindly. User hostile is a good way of putting it.

Are they printed on the box in a readable form before the customer buys the product?

Very different things.