they obey the first cardinal rule. OPT-IN.

This crap here of hiding pre-checked boxes about T&C, etc. is just flat WRONG.

The modern step would be to have a very easily readable "synopsis" of the word salad with a drizzle of legalese that is
mandatory to read and a mandatory download of the full toilet paper roll of said agreements.

On the above point there a programs available that scan documents looking for booby traps in agreements.

This gets us to a hair's width away from having a complete "contract".
Remember contracts are a meeting of the minds as a compromise and agreement to all points by both sides.

Boiler plates and shrink wrap licenses should have never been allowed.

Even when you opt out and uncheck your boxes, they go back and re-check them. You don't even know until you go back to the same page every so often. I've seen this on Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and I'm sure there are others.

Nothing is forever, especially on the opt-outs.

discussion when it first got started about how they OWN your data and your content. In fact privacy issues were a big factor in why many of us chose not to use it. So why are people now so surprised to find out they dont own their data? The business model is that the profit is derived from the harvesting of your data. They are not running FB as an altruistic, not for profit org.

But FB, and all of the Social Media sites have maintain this illusion so that the widgets aren't supposed to know they are widgets. But for legal plausible deniability, they haven't been too secretive, so its easy to find out what Social Media's business model is... if you put 5 minutes of effort in it.

But most Internet denizens don't bother with that, so Social Media let's this thin illusion lie where it is, and occasionally made noise about privacy. All while they collected, processed, packaged, and sold the Big Data they are mining out of the widgets.

But now the illusion has been dispelled and the widgets are learning they are widgets to be processed, packaged, and sold and it turns out human beings don't like being commodities, so they're in full revolt.

Now that the conceit of Social Media is out, they are all scrambling to stop the bleeding. FB will crumble in a day if there's a mass exodus of widgets. If there are no widgets to mine, there is nothing to sell, FB dries up.

What I'm waiting for are the calls to fill Social Media with nonsense bunk information that will poison the widget mine of Big Data.

What humans are learning is this: The Internet is a wide open room, anybody can hear anybody else talking. So only say what you're comfortable the whole world knowing. That includes showing your kids pictures in the room to grandma and grandpa, that weird uncle nobody likes is also there looking too. So you have to remember that before saying anything on the Internet.

That goes double for DU. Anybody can read every post here, no account needed, everything said goes out to the world and scumbags do lurk here taking notes.

is that there is a class action suit against Facebook for this. Zuckerberg clearly only cares about money, so take away what he cares about the most to show him how wrong his actions are.

In lots of ways these days ... glad the EU has set the best standard for internet privacy 👀