Infographic by visualcapitalist from April 16, 2020: How long it would take to read the terms of service agreements of popular online services. Even the shortest terms and conditions are a few thousand words long. 97% of people aged 18-34 consent without reading. Read @240wpm by readinglength.com - From Insta at 9:43 & 2451 words, to MS at 1:03:30 & 15260 words. Left to right, is FB, Insta, Spotify, Twitter, LI, Tinder, YT, Apple, Amazon, Zoom, TikTok, Netflix and chill for 11 mins while reading their ToS which was then the second shortest. The mega MS! and finally Uber which in 2020 was 23 mins 35 seconds and 5,658 words.
Not shown: On Uber today Dec 6th, 2024 I've spent 26 mins skimming around multiple "Privacy check-up, interactive tour of privacy settings" centres, full of clever drop down, external links in an in-app webview requiring cookie consent, with other external content each requiring consent, the consent process spawned another ToS to consent to to read a ToS many of which were 37 min reads each, and each different with more links, many also loading US terms with dropdowns for country pickers that took you back out of one WebView to another in my geo to start the journey again, finding a "Privacy Centre" & a "Legal hub", and quite a few 404s, A "Data tracking" page with a consent tick box which "For more information please see our United States privacy page" which claimed a 2 min read which had a "Proceed to opt-out" button and then I gave up.
So I can't give a total, but my skimming around without reading took more that 30 mins and without learning much. There was also a legal section at the bottom of the page that I didn't explore!
Maybe time to do a SAR for my analytics data they've collected (with my consent?) to see what % of policy docs I've actually read! Then a SAR on Telium...
MS recently asked me to skim a 3 hour 56 min "Privacy" document and consent.
CMPs oft full of 'dark patterns' who's got actual legal capacity to informed consent? Lawyers only? Joan is Awful was fiction, Disney+ not. Assistive tech can't safely read this mix of ToS, EULAs, Privacy & Cookie docs, in HTML or PDFs; clever CSS & dropdowns, buttons & links, on & offsite. 2020β¬οΈπ€·π