Niharika (@Lawbertarian) tweeted: "This ❤️ A lawyer rewrote Instagram's terms of use 'in plain English' so kids would know their privacy rights"
A lawyer rewrote Instagram’s terms of use ‘in plain English’ so kids would know their privacy rights
“‘Terms and conditions’ is one of the first things you agree to when you come upon a site,” Jenny Afia, a privacy lawyer and partner at Schillings law firm in London, told The Washington Post. “But of course no one reads them. I mean, most adults don’t read them.”
Afia was a member of a “Growing Up Digital” task force group convened by the Children’s Commissioner for England to study Internet use among teens and the concerns children might face as they grow up in the digital age.
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One reason for this became apparent when the task force asked a group of teenagers to read and interpret Instagram’s terms and conditions. Many of them balked at the exercise: Instagram’s terms of use in total run at least seven printed pages, with more than 5,000 words, mostly written in legalese.
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Other complex paragraphs were similarly condensed to sentences that were easier to digest:
- “Don’t bully anyone or post anything horrible about people.”
- “Officially you own any original pictures and videos you post, but we are allowed to use them, and we can let others use them as well, anywhere around the world. Other people might pay us to use them and we will not pay you for that.”
- “Although you are responsible for the information you put on Instagram, we may keep, use and share your personal information with companies connected with Instagram. This information includes your name, email address, school, where you live, pictures, phone number, your likes and dislikes, where you go, who your friends are, how often you use Instagram, and any other personal information we find such as your birthday or who you are chatting with, including in private messages (DMs).”
Keep reading at Washington Post (32 more paragraphs) | Desktop version
On the other hand, too much plain speaking could also be bad for a client, it appears:
At least one teenager quoted in the report said he would take privacy matters into his own hands, however, after going through the exercise. “I’m deleting Instagram,” 13-year-old Alex said, “because it’s weird.”
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For: “The situation is serious,” Afia said in the report. “Young people are unwittingly giving away personal information, with no real understanding of who is holding that information, where they are holding it and what they are going to do with it.”
Against (the interests of the client): At least one teenager quoted in the report said he would take privacy matters into his own hands, however, after going through the exercise. “I’m deleting Instagram,” 13-year-old Alex said, “because it’s weird.”
In other words, oftentimes T&Cs are probably intentionally obtuse to mask companies' vague privacy policies. So, should a lawyer representing a client in the best way possible defend consumer rights or help a client fudge the truth a bit?
I agree with you that fudging the truth is morally rather indefensible, though everyday pragmatism and legal ethics put this in a grey area.
If the client's business need is, for instance: we need to screw people's privacy (or right X, such as warranties) as far as is possible within the law, but we don't want them to know outright, that's a perfectly legal instruction, is it not? Professional ethics would require that the lawyer follow the client's instruction and hide more nefarious (but legal) parts of the contract in the small print?
To some extent, all lawyers do that by pushing favourable clauses for their clients (while the opposing side resists). But when a consumer is involved, who has no bargaining power or legal advice usually, it can end up being unfair (to the consumer, though not necessarily for the company).
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