Partly it's because consumers cannot tell a good from a bad contract.
And partly I think it's that a lot of people say the right signals ('I care deeply about privacy!') As it's the cause de celebre, but don't actually care.
Sometimes they just want to watch Hulu without going on a stallman esque campaign.
Some people just seem to feel "smart" by wording things as convoluted as possible, using fancy words and references. The truth is, it is much harder to express thoughts clearly with simple, yet elegant words. Mostly because that makes everyone understand it, and everyone able to see through the facade. Meaning that whatever you say will need to hold up to much more scrutiny and you can't hide behind a facade of "fancyness" that scares off readers.
It's similar to coding. Writing simple code for complex programs is much much harder than writing complex code for complex problems, or even worse complex code for simple problems, which many people like to do.
My comment wasn't categorical. IE, I didn't get on either the "T&Cs are evil bullshit" or "contracts are the basis of civilization" side. If you're reading for category, everything else is flowery nonsense. Just tell me which side you're on and why.
I reread it. One fancy word: Linnaean. Considering this is HN, that should be OK.
I get the feeling you're reacting to the fact that I didn't state a position or a conclusion in my short HN comment. So basically, you don't like that my HN comment isn't a tweet.
If nobody did this, we would not have political sciences :-)
Reality is generally less fussy about categorical boundaries. It likes spectrum. Linnaean classification is an approximation. Biology isn't strict about species, or even organism barriers. It's the same with a lot of cultural stuff.
On one end of the spectrum, we can have a business agreement negotiated diligently and in good faith between equal partners. On the other end, we have take-it-or-leave it agreements: The T&Cs stack a bank hands you when you take a loan. The wall of incomprehensible legalese we consent to when we use an app or website. An employment contract is somewhere on that spectrum. Employees may be able to submit "red line corrections" depending on their seniority and confidence, but generally its written by employers and treated as under their control.
In philosophy, contracts (including rhetorical ones like "moral contracts) are a popular mechanism for problem solving. They certainly are in law. In normal human life, norms are much more common.