Friday 7 December 2012

Does anyone actually read T&Cs?

A lot of websites have terms and conditions. However, does anyone read this before they press 'accept'? If you were to read the terms and conditions, you would realise that it is full of unconcerning points that we need to accept to in order to continue. Whether it be Facebook, twitter, amazon, eBay- it all had terms and conditions.
Here is a link to Facebook's terms of conditions. As you can see, the page is extremely long and full of text. Facebook, as all other companies, do this in order to stop you from reading on and so you just press 'accept'. This way, they are allowed to put whatever they want in their terms and conditions. For example, Facebook is allowed to use our information and view our pages. This means reading our private 'inboxes'. Bet you didn't realise that they weren't so private?

In the 'Safety' section of Facebook's terms and conditions, the number one point they make is 'You will not post unauthorised commercial communications (such as spam) on Facebook.' However, then the sixth point, in the same section is 'You will not bully, intimidate, or harass any user.' Any user of the number one social networking website would think that they would be safe in using it. And although these are in the terms and conditions, they are not Facebook's main concern. 
Have you ever heard of trolls? Trolls are people that use social networking websites, such as Facebook, to anonymously cause havoc by bullying, intimidating and harassing users. Although I am sure Facebook does what it can to ensure these 'trolls' are blocked and removed from the website, it really does raise the question whether anyone actually pays attention and sticks to the terms of conditions

It is worrying to think that even though it is a tiny number of people that read these terms and conditions, would it make any difference if we all did?

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