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> From a factual perspective, I honestly think that shouldn’t be controversial: it’s well-understood that very few people actually read those things, they just want to get them out of the way

There’s no way this would fly. “I didn’t read it” can’t possibly be an excuse to avoid being bound by an agreement. Every party to an agreement that flaunted its terms, even though they took advantage of the benefits granted by it, would invoke it as a defense, and it’s irrefutable. The system would completely fall apart if this happened.

There’s a balance that needs to be carefully managed here. Yes, fairness to consumers is important. But you can’t destroy the incentive to produce value in so doing.

> “I didn’t read it” can’t possibly be an excuse to avoid being bound by an agreement

Only engineers have trouble understanding this. It can be a reasonable defense, and it has successfully been used in courts of law many times. The law is not a machine that compiles text like code literally. Imagine someone who coerces a dying or sick person to sign an agreement they couldn’t possibly be in a reasonable state of mind to understand what they were doing -- the law can and does invalidate such “contracts”. That is the same principle behind age of consent laws. The law could theorerically (and does) invalidate “agreements” which no one is reasonably expected to read and understand.

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It can and has been in many cases in many legal systems. For example, let’s say you walk into my store to buy a dish washer. I say ”here is an extended warranty that I will give you. Just sign” you sign it instead of reading 15 pages of boilerplate. In the end of the document it says you now owe me 10 billion dollars. Doubt I will be able to enforce it in most legal systems.
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That argument has actually worked in some cases, especially when you need to click away to actually access the document. I assume it's why we see more and more examples where you need to scroll the full body of text in order to "agree".
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I don’t see how we could possibly prove that the person who clicked “I agree” is still the person using the computer.

Or that any actual human is aware that an agreement was made (since an AI can find a checkbox nowadays or software can be configured to bypass it). One way to add balance could be to require people asking for contracts to actually treat them like real serious legal documents, show up for the signing, and figure out who they are making an agreement with.

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> There’s a balance that needs to be carefully managed here. Yes, fairness to consumers is important. But you can’t destroy the incentive to produce value in so doing.

The value is derived from the people consuming the product. Placing the "incentive to produce value" above the people who presumably are the source of this value seems...misaligned.

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Of you need a nonstandard contract then you need to provide proof that it was understood. These are not provided in a context where I would expect anyone reading it to have a lawyer to advise so they obviously don't understand it
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But "its specifically engineered to ensure that nobody reads it" is a real argument
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