TL;DR: Mass. Rep. Trahan backs bill simplifying those lengthy online TOS agreements

So you’ve just downloaded an app or enrolled in a streaming service. You know what comes next: A whole mess of complicated legalese and a little box at the end, that you click, acknowledging that you’ve read it all.

But ... come on ... did you? Really?

If you’re among the countless Americans who skip to the bottom, click, and live on in blissful ignorance of the legal agreement you just tangled yourself up in, only to have it bite you later, don’t worry.

There’s a bill for that.

On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Lori Trahan, D-3rd District, teamed up with two U.S. senators, to reintroduce a bill requiring online companies to make all that legalese comprehensible to the average consumer.

They’ve dubbed the bipartisan, bicameral bill the “Terms of Service Labeling, Design, and Readability Act,” or, for the extremely online among you, the “TLDR Act.”

See what they did there?

"Consumers shouldn’t have to wade through pages of dense legal jargon just to use a website or app,” Trahan said in a statement.

Right now “companies force users into an all-or-nothing choice: agree to everything or lose access entirely. No negotiation, no alternatives, no real choice,” the Lowell Democrat, who sits on the House’s Energy and Commerce Committee, added.

On the other side of Capitol Hill, U.S. Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Ben Ray Luján, D-N.M., are sponsoring companion legislation.

“Far too many companies take advantage of consumers by burying critical details about their data policies and shield themselves from legal liability in complicated terms-of-service agreements,” Luján said.

“The TLDR Act will end these harmful practices and help empower and protect consumers. Informing consumers is a bipartisan issue, and I’m proud to join my colleagues to provide real choice online,” Luján continued.

Experts agree that most consumers have no idea what’s in the lengthy agreements, nor the rights or privacy protections that they’re signing away when they hurriedly click “I Agree,” so they can binge-watch their favorite shows.

What’s more, the legal documents have increased in length and complexity, leading to fewer Americans reading the terms of service before agreeing, the lawmakers said.

And it’s not a new problem.

They pointed to 2012 study found that it would take 76 work days for the average American to read the agreements for the websites and platforms they routinely use. And a 2022 poll found that nearly 9 out of every 10 Americans have agreed to a company’s terms of service without reading the fine print, the noted.

“We know from studies that nobody reads [the terms of service],” University of Chicago Law School professor Omri Ben-Shahar told NPR in a 2014 interview.

“And when I say nobody, I’m not rounding up a small number to zero,” he quipped.

Flash-forward a decade, and nothing’s changed.

“Nobody is going to read pages of legal jargon. Companies should be required to provide terms of service that people without a law degree can understand,” Cassidy said in that joint statement. “Americans have the right to know how their data is collected and used.”

If it’s passed by the House and Senate and signed into law, the bill would require online companies, except small businesses, to include a nutrition label-style summary table at the top of their terms of service and tag the full, long-form terms with XML tags.

That would make the agreements more accessible and understandable for consumers and researchers alike, they said

The bill also mandates that the summary inform consumers about how their data is collected and shared, including by requiring companies to produce a graphical representation of how their consumer data is shared with third parties.

And, if you’ve made it to the bottom of this story, the last word goes to Trahan who noted that online companies hold all the cards on these legal agreements.

And “they exploit this imbalance by burying critical terms in confusing contracts, knowing most people don’t have the time to sift through them just to send a message or make a quick purchase,” she said.

The bill “puts power back in consumers’ hands by requiring companies to provide clear, transparent summaries of their terms – something the American people overwhelmingly support.”