Use agreements for digital services are long and unreadable for most people, US senators think. A mandatory summary should provide relief.
American Democrats and Republicans can’t agree on much, but on one issue the noses are apparently in the same direction: usage agreements of digital solutions are too long. Two Democrats and one Republican are therefore launching a bill in the U.S. Congress: the TLDR Act.
TL;DR stands for To Long; Didn’t Read. You regularly encounter it on Internet forums above or below extensive text, where TL;DR precedes a concise summary. Such a summary lawmakers now hope to mandate in the U.S., though in their case TLDR stands for Terms-of-service labeling, designand readability. The petitioners are consistent, providing their own one-page summary for their proposal.
Clear summary
The proposal would require organizations to share the essence of an agreement in a short and understandable way. It must be readable by computers and visible at the top of a Web page containing the user agreement. The summary must include what kind of data an organization is collecting, why it is needed, what rights a customer has and what has changed recently. Further, companies must share whether they have been the victim of a hack in the past three years.
If the law passes, it won’t necessarily have an impact on European services but could serve as inspiration. The EU can boast strict regulations that protect personal data well, but legislation such as the GDPR does not really encourage user-friendliness. Just think of the constant pop-ups of cookies that the average Internet user especially wants to quickly click away.