I worked at deviantArt back in the early 2010s, they notably had a user agreement that did not claim any rights more than necessary, and it was revocable by the user without jumping through hoops. So it's not necessary to do things this way, companies do it intentionally because they don't care about the rights of their users.
I am building a company that accepts user generated data, and one surprising struggle is getting my lawyers to stop writing shitty, overbroad, abusive TOS. They are just so used to it, and all the templates and boiler plate is designed to give me everything and the user nothing. And if I want to do better by ny users I have to fight and cajole my own lawyers and pay extra for them to do the extra work of writing terms that aren’t predatory because that is unusual and custom.
It depends on your perspective surely? As a lawyer your job is typically to protect your client from legal risk, so if users are happy to sign a really expansive set of terms (which experience shows is the case) that gives grants lots of permission to do stuff with their data then that's low risk. If you as a business don't want that then you need to make it explicit that you're willing to take on some extra risk.
Also by using “standard boilerplate” they are using language with meanings well established by precedent. Craft your own version in “regular English” and it’s much more open to litigation.
Wishing you luck, you are doing some good work putting in the effort to respect the data of the user, something which stands out in a seas full of companies who do not care.
I definitely recall uproars over DA doing this exact same kind of overreach in their TOS! Possibly before you were around, doing the math on my user page there saying "deviant for 22y" tells me I opened my account there in 2003.
Companies do it because lawsuits are "explosive", if the Chrome team fucks up, they can bring down not only Chrome, but potentially the entirety of Google itself.
Deviant Art's only product is Deviant art, so the upside in goodwill from a user-friendly agreement might be greater than the downside of some remote possiblity of a lawsuit. This isn't true about Google, which has many other products and revenue streams.
This just seems like the right approach. It's never going to be safe to claim the rights to user uploaded content without verifying they hold the rights to it in the first place.
The corollary to this is that companies do this because they are incentivised to do so by their very fundamental goal - to make profit. Whatever pressure that does not lead to a loss on the quarterly report is, in practice, no pressure at all. If we truly want these predatory practices to stop, we have to start promoting different incentives, different priorities, and by 'we' I really mean 'each and every one of us collectively'.
Another factor, presumably, is that people at the low end of the income spectrum simply don't have any time to socialize because simply surviving takes almost all of their time and what is left is simply exhaustion.
Many parts of the world are experiencing very extreme income inequality as more wealth gravitates towards the top. I suspect this is happening almost everywhere but it definitely seems to be the case in the US, Canada, the UK and (to a lesser extent, perhaps) in western Europe. With the bottom 50% of the population just barely able to survive it's not at all a surprise that social activities and opportunities are going extinct.
I think socializing really is a luxury not afforded to most people. The folks in the top 50% of income live in a very different world from the bottom 50%
Generally agree. Had about the same experience working the last job. Took significant effort to go out and find social activities, or develop regular social appointments each week that encouraged participation. Find a board gaming group, just to leave the house after work. Develop a roleplaying group, just to leave the house after work.
Many days of the draining 9 to 5 that mostly just encouraged crashing on the couch and trying not to do very much for several hours. And that was a relatively stable paying job by comparison to many. Working a normal plus a gig job in the modern world seems like there would be little time for anything else.
On the wealth gravitating, had the same consideration (figure many have). With the excessive focus on wealth, the majority of the world is different for the upper 50% (with the caveat that they then focus into the upper 50%, of the upper 50%, of the upper 50%, ect...)
Personal view is it would not be so bad, if the wealthy were actually spending anything. Except unfortunately it seems to have turned into the Russ Hanneman joke from Silicon Valley. They don't want to spend anything because they're worried about losing their status on the ladder bracket. And the only objective is "move to the next upper 50%." If you're $999 millionaire, you fall off the "wealthy" list, and it's like binary where suddenly you get uninvited from all the events people on "the list" get to go to.
From a game designer background though, it's frustrating, because it's like a game where there's 10-20 possible "resources", and all anybody will pay attention to is the "coin" quantity. Almost nothing else provides any form of status or tangible benefit. Academic citations don't really provide that much. Military rank doesn't really provide that much. They all still converge towards "bank account" and "coin" quantity.
Yeah, it's probably two full days of collecting and recycling aluminum.
(Not trying to belittle the homeless, I only mention this because it is how the homeless people in my old neighborhood would earn a little bit of cash. They don't deserve all the scorn they endure and I help them out every chance I get.)
Their actions are pretty clearly to consolidate power, replace everyone with loyalists, cut taxes on the rich, deport and depopulate the country and transfer assets to their associates. Once the economy is tanked they can go on a buying spree and pick up all sorts of private assets for bargain price.
I keep thinking about musks group having all this financial data (that his business competitors do not!) and feeding it into a model to find signal he can use to further his empire / investments. I also see his stated intention to make the “one app to rule them all” (for govt ID, banking, etc) as another route to the same data. His payments to / cleaving to trump really accelerated his underlying goal.
Most politicians are doing all sorts of real estate deals on the side. That’s why there are all kinds of tax breaks and incentives for real estate. It’s not to encourage such activity, but rather to directly benefit themselves and their associates.
Every person appointed by trump is completely unqualified to do their jobs and most of them are objectively and openly racist, sexist, authoritarian, vindictive, corrupt, and completely unconcerned with any law or decency.
An 8.0 would still cause massive devastation. Even if structures mostly survive there is the threat of fire and tsunami. This antenna tower looks like it is likely to survive though.
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