I miss the days when burying awful things that nobody would willingly accept in the fine print (which few people read and most people have a hard time understanding) was something we all understood to be immoral, to the point that it was a cartoon trope as something the Devil would do.

EDIT: with that said they did a great job fixing my phone with an hour or two.

(IANAL, could be wrong)

The real underlying strategy here is to leverage people's general ignorance of contract law in order to intimidate them into thinking that they are contractually bound when in fact they are not, at least not legally. As a practical matter, the need to pay a lawyer often trumps the actual law (another lesson I learned the hard way).

This is so they can reuse the parts as “genuine” to do the next customer. The watch repair industry is notorious for this. They replace more than they need to, using aftermarket parts, and keep the originals for their own stock.

I was naive but I couldn’t conceive of that happening, going through a legitimate and large jewelry business.

The receipt was really long and not like a normal checkout receipt.

Also part of the profitability of uBreak was selling broken components removed from devices (like good LCDs with broken glass) back to OEMs to be refurbished, so that's why they don't let you have the old parts back.

She told me that it was a policy of Samsung...

We certainly didn't tell them it was some company policy, and LCD replacement was cheaper if your LCD was in good shape so its pretty transparent

Could the phrasing be better? Of course. One option is "I have deleted all private content on this account. I understand that anything remaining will be made public as part of our 'Free Tier.' Click here to delete your presentations if you have not done so already."

But calling it immoral to screw up in the manner of highlighting the issue seems a bit much to me.

Friendliest way to do this would be to keep content for a month after cancelling, but only let -you- see it if you renew or decide to make it public.

A) delete a lot of their stuff, or

B) make all their stuff public

Either could be really, really bad.

You could let the user pick between the two options, I guess. But really, most everyone cancelling something like this needs to go through their stuff and decide for each item: "Keep, but make public" or "Delete".

If both options are likely to be extremely undesirable to a substantive fraction of canceling users, that's the best option.

If there was a most-likely-safe option from the user perspective, choosing that by default and having it confirmed would arguably be better UX, but I don't think "keep everything that used to be private and make it public" is really a "clearly-safer option". Nor, even in the cases where it is safer, do I think that this presents the confirmation well.

> But really, most everyone cancelling something like this needs to go through their stuff and decide for each item: "Keep, but make public" or "Delete".

Some people do, but I bet lots of people have collections that very easily fall into either "Delete all" or "Keep all and make public" by the time they cancel (if only because they are only canceling after everything to which that decision wouldn't apply has been migrated to an alternative service.)

C) make the private stuff inaccessible pending a subscription renewal

D) make it unusable but recoverable

both possibly with some grace period before it is deleted

You're guessing, and I think you're making too strong a statement about something you only guessed at.

I looked through https://prezi.com/terms-of-use/201910_NL/ ("Effective September 1, 2020") and didn't see anything about this.

If someone stops paying for private data hosting, then I'd expect them to lose private data hosting -- in full. I don't see how the "private" in "private data hosting" could be seen as severable without explicit agreement to such a provision.

By analogy, it'd be like if someone requested a plumber come by to their house to replace their toilet. Then when cancelling the request, the plumber said, okay, we can cancel, but the customer must accept the free version of this service: they'll come by and take the old toilet away -- because this is a free service, cancelling the paid version merely cancels them putting in the new toilet, but they still get the old one.

It seems to me that a customer who cancels something shouldn't be forced to accept a substitute service. It'd seem reasonable for the service-provider to ask if the customer wanted the substitute, but language implying that the customer must accept it seems wrong.

But, is that what's happening here?

1. Your data is deleted and no longer hosted. 2. Your data is still hosted and made public.

The first one is what I would expect to happen since it makes the most sense in the context of the service. The second one just makes you look like a jerk.

When the girls later discovered that their scenes were available to anyone on the internet, and tried to "cancel their service", they released their information to all and sundry including their parents/bosses, etc. Just to be jerks.

I mean, say you were in the situation with a plumber who did offer a free service of taking away people's toilets (which seems plausible -- some people might appreciate getting rid of their old toilet for free, while a plumber might offer the service in order to resell the old toilets). And then you paid for a plumber to replace yours, and they insisted that while you cancel the replacement, they were still going to take away your old one. Would you accept this, holding that it's a legal (if jerkish) way to have the toilet replacement canceled?

The plumber is a services for hire offering. Prezi is a data storage offering.

The plumber story involves work that has not yet occured and then is subsequently canceled. Prezi involves ongoing services that are being canceled.

I don't think the plumber analogy comes even close to a good example here.

Again, I see how this makes sense IF we assume that the "private" in "private data hosting" is severable. But while not a lawyer, I don't think that's true without a contractual agreement establishing it.

To be clear, I can appreciate that a provider might intend to offer privacy as a severable feature. But that seems like something they have to tell the customer. Before the customer uploads private information, they should be made aware that, should they stop paying, that private information will be published.

While not a lawyer, I don't think any reasonable court would buy the argument that customers who upload private information are consenting to have it published once they cancel the service unless there's strong evidence to that effect. It seems like a toxic arrangement that people would be unlikely to agree to, so I'd think that there would be a high standard of proof for the provider to establish that the customer intended to agree to it. I'm not sure if merely being buried in the fine print would be enough in a case like this, but is it even in the fine print?

"My subscription lapsed and the 5 decks I'd been working on and hadn't made public yet vanished forever!!!"

Then a customer could:

1. Convert it to public and access it as such.

2. Remove it.

3. Leave it alone, possibly intending to privately access it in the future if they can re-subscribe. (It'd seem reasonable to me if a service provider opted to automatically delete inaccessible content after some time-out period of non-subscription; I'd see their retention of such inaccessible content as a professional courtesy rather than an obligation of theirs unless the contract says otherwise.)

Then I'd think that a good service would offer migration tools to help make these options easier on the customer. For example, offer an easy option to make everything public or delete everything.

But it's hard for me to see how forcing publication upon canceling a service could be defensible without some sort of contractual provision to that effect.

I don't think Prezi are doing anything bad here at all, except possibly communicating their policy badly.

Edit: looks like if your account expires, your data is still private, which is the right thing to do here. https://support.prezi.com/hc/en-us/articles/360003478894-Can...

Based on those terms, yes. The terms are bung. But that's a separate matter.

This is victim blaming, and it legitimizes the heinous practice of putting onerous terms behind a click-through acceptance. Please stop.

It's simply making an argument...to which you can just change your response to read "The real problem is the heinous practice of putting..."

And then I agree with you 100%. Or 99%, anyway.

>You understand and agree that WWW.GAIAPLATFORM.IO and any of its subsidiaries or affiliates shall in no event be liable for any direct, indirect, incidental, consequential, or exemplary damages.

Limiting your liability in the event I have DIRECT damages from using your product definitely hurts the end user. I don't want to opt into it... however:

>If you do not want to be bound by our Terms your only option is not to visit, view or otherwise use the services of WWW.GAIAPLATFORM.IO

Interesting. I assume you'll be correcting these immoral terms ASAP.

No, you didn't. You may have ticked a box that said you read the terms of service, but as we all know, no one is reading those documents. It's just plainly dishonest to drop something so unexpected into a ToS.

[a]: The reason being: you checked a box acknowledging that you read them so you can’t claim you didn’t because then someone could read them, then claim they didn’t. It’s a terrible abuse of contract law, but it is unfortunately the world we live in if the legislature won’t fix it.

That's a great question. I'd expect that courts would not uphold claims to one's first-born child[0][1], but only because that sort of thing is already illegal (human trafficking). As for stuff that isn't illegal, I expect that YMMV.

That said, people actually "agreed" to give up/assign their first-born children with these "Click-wrap" agreements.

That people are so cavalier about such things should be a huge red flag for regulators to require not just a link to such terms, but that both parties should be required to demonstrate their specific understanding of terms and conditions before such a contract can be considered enforceable.

But that's not how US courts have interpreted this sort of thing. So, as always, Caveat Emptor!

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/29/londoners...

[1] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/07/nobody-reads-tos...

Edit: Fixed spacing.

Also says that any claim you make has to be made in some particular US court. WTF, this is a game I bought in Australia.

There were pages and pages of other legalese but those are the parts that I remember.

I was so angry after reading it that I haven't accepted it or been able to play the game (that I paid for) since.

What kind of bullshit is that? Changing the terms of something that I purchased six months earlier?

I wonder what would happen if I take it back to the store and ask for a refund because I can't accept the TOS.

It is nice and good for your reputation to call out these unexpected things, make them very visible and make sure they are hard to miss.

This does not always align well with business incentives, but I don't think that being insidious helped the company's bottom line in any way. It's just lack of attention to customer experience, not malice.

'If you cancel, all of your private presentations will be deleted.' with a tick box that says 'I understand - delete my private data'. I should not have to go do a bunch of extra legwork to ensure my private data doesn't become public when I cancel my subscription, and in particular, non-consensual cancellations (e.g. cancellation due to non-payment) must not make my private data public.

They can block people in the EU all they want, it won't make a difference.

I don't know about you, but I never agree to anything when I sign up to anything, because I never read anything before I sign up, just like everyone else (except people paid to do so.)

Which is why a "severability clause"[0] is pretty ubiquitous in contracts.

N.B.: IANAL

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/severability.asp

On topic, I think a friendlier approach would be to automatically delist or unpublish anything flagged private. The user can then go and update as needed.

I figured maybe you give Prezi the rights to your content, but in fact, no. They can only republish your content on their account if you tag it as "public":

Customer hereby grants to Prezi a world-wide, non-exclusive, revocable, royalty-free, fully paid, sublicensable and transferable license for the Term of this Agreement to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display, distribute and transmit the Customer Content: (i) for the purpose of providing the Presentation Services to Customer and (ii) to the extent Customer has designated any portion of the Customer Content as “Public Content” through the content management features of the Presentation Services, for Prezi to make use of such “Public Content” in connection with promotion and marketing of Prezi’s products and services. Customer also hereby grants to Prezi a world-wide, non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free, fully paid, sublicensable and transferable license to (a) analyze the Customer Content for the purposes of quality control, benchmarking and improving the Presentation Services and (b) maintain a back-up copy of Customer’s “Public Content” indefinitely. Customer represents and warrants that it has all rights, clearances and authority necessary to grant the foregoing licenses to Prezi. Customer reserves all rights to the Customer Content that are not expressly granted in this Agreement.

1.) I understand this is a rhetorical device but it is disingenuous to ask someone to provide evidence of what another individual knew and when.

2.) Their terms are public. Your comment would have been more usefully informed had you bothered to read them.

In literacy tests, under 2% of Americans read beyond a grade 12 level. Odds are than under 1% could read that terms of use and actually understand it. Even if they wanted to.

(Note, they only analyze the first 3000 words.)

TEXT READABILITY CONSENSUS CALCULATOR www.ReadabilityFormulas.com

Timestamp: 11/02/2020 — 12:19:15pm

Purpose: Our Text Readability Consensus Calculator uses 7 popular readability formulas to calculate the average grade level, reading age, and text difficulty of your sample text.

Your Results:

Your text: These Prezi Business Terms and Conditions, togethe ... (2920 words total)

1. Flesch Reading Ease score: 29 (text scale) Flesch Reading Ease scored your text: very difficult to read.

2. Gunning Fog: 17 (text scale) Gunning Fog scored your text: difficult to read.

3. Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 15 Grade level: College.

4. The Coleman-Liau Index: 13 Grade level: college

5. The SMOG Index: 14 Grade level: college

6. Automated Readability Index: 15 Grade level: College graduate

7. Linsear Write Formula: 18 Grade level: College Graduate and above.

---------------------------------------------- READABILITY CONSENSUS ---------------------------------------------- Based on (7) readability formulas, we have scored your text:

Grade Level: 15 Reading Level: very difficult to read. Age of Reader: College graduate ----------------------------------------------

I find this hard to believe, given that 34% of Americans have a college degree.

That's roughly "college level reading" on official measures.

And yes, comparing high school graduation rates with adult literacy it is obvious that a lot of people graduated high school with skills below what they were supposed to have. I find this depressing but in accord with my experience.

You might have misread that. It says 2% of global adults (“across all countries”) are level 5. It also says that level 5 does not officially exist, and level 4 is the highest level on the PIAAC scale.

According to that article, 12% of Americans are in the highest level measured. Over 13% of Americans have post-graduate degrees. And while on the scale you linked to, the U.S. ranks lower than a lot of countries, don’t ignore the fact that the spread of absolute scores above the U.S. is in the single digit percentages. Framing these particular scores as representing some kind of glaring education problem here seems to be over-emphasizing minor global differences and ignoring some context.

I hope this gives you reasons to feel more optimistic. We have plenty of room to improve, but it is clearly not as bad as you thought.

If you go to https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014008.pdf for a more detailed look at the data, you'll find that the fraction of adults world-wide who score at level 4/5 is the same as the USA. In age breakdowns, more US 55-65 year olds are at that top literacy bracket, and in every other age cohort is worse.

Therefore there is no reason to believe that the US at the level 5 is any different than the global average. And there is reason to suspect that the USA is getting worse over time.

Incidentally I was merely stating it as data and didn't blame this on a glaring education problem here. That would be a much longer discussion.

It is clear that the earlier claim "under 2% of Americans read beyond a grade 12 level" is not true, and not what your supporting links actually say. It's absolutely clear that your speculation "Odds are than under 1% could read that [Prezi's] terms of use and actually understand it." is both not true and dramatically pessimistic.

Yes, legalese is dense. Hardly anyone reads it because it takes a lot of time, not because nobody is capable. How many people read below a 12th grade level (whatever that means) are using Prezi in the first place?

I'm just pointing out that your initial interpretation of the data was off by an order of magnitude.

There absolutely is a level 5. It was defined and measured in the survey. Both links confirm that.

But then they did not break it down in the reporting because few enough people fell into it for their survey to produce reasonable statistics on a per country level.

Now you are correct that I should not have said "under 2%". But given that the portion of the USA at level 4/5 matches the international portion at the same level (both cases 12%), it seems likely that the portion of the USA at level 5 (which the survey was not large enough to estimate) is about the same as the international average (which the survey measured at 2%).

Therefore even though the survey did not report a figure for the USA, it is likely that the real figure is around 2%.

I stand by my belief that this terms of service is sufficiently complex that even fewer can understand it.

You are right that the average Prezi user is more likely to be literate than the average American.

This figure is meaningless, which is part of why they didn’t report it. You’re fixating on a number that doesn’t inform you.

Whatever their level 5 means, it excludes at least 90% of the people who wrote large technical and impenetrable documents just to graduate from school, not including all the practicing lawyers, doctors, engineers, scientists, and writers in the country.

There’s a disconnect between using the 2% number to represent any kind of literacy threshold, and reality. It may have measured something, but this “2%” does not represent a limit on number of people who have the capability to read Prezi’s terms of service.

> I stand by my belief that this terms of service is sufficiently complex that even fewer [than 2%] can understand it.

That’s unfortunate, I’ve failed to make a convincing argument. I was hoping to help you see more clearly that’s not what your data actually says, and is also contradicted by other data as well. The data isn’t wrong, but your interpretation is.

Plus it's a poor use of half an hour if they can change things anyway:

> Prezi may revise these Prezi Business Terms and Conditions. If Prezi makes material revisions, Prezi will notify Customer, either through the user interface of the Presentation Services, in an email notification or through other reasonable means. Customer’s use of the Presentation Services after the date such revisions become effective will constitute consent to the revised Prezi Business Terms and Conditions.

I know it doesn't exactly say that...but it doesn't clearly say anything else either, and presumably some actual body of laws has to apply no matter how California's laws evolve; I'm honestly curious what the actual intended result of this provision is.

> In the event your paid Prezi account reverts to a free Prezi Public account, any content you previously created with a paid Prezi account and designated as Private User Content will remain Private User Content, but you will not be able to edit such content. New content you create with such an account will become Public User Content, which means any new content you create from that point forward is going to be public.

(emphasis mine)

(*) delete all data, () make data public.

It may come as a surprise but not everything written in a contract is in fact enforceable. I can demand that I get your firstborn when you cancel your subscription, doesn't mean that's going to happen.

GDPR gives you the rights to delete your personal data regardless of you having a subscription so I'm pretty sure this is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Whether the GDPR apply to data stored on that service can only be judged on a case by case basis after having looked at the data in question.

In any case, I'm not sure that they prevent their customers from deleting data. It seems that that content is public unless deleted if a customer cancels their paid subscription.