As a non-lawyer (is that what you mean by “normal person”?) who has read several TOS, here are some tips off the top of my head:
1. Use fewer services. This limits the amount you have to read or worry about changes.
2. Of the services you use, limit the personal information you provide. Disposable emails and making up names and birthdates (when they are mandatory) all help. Only do this for services where you don’t care if your account is closed. Particularly impactful for those services which make it a pain to delete an account.
3. Don’t read the full TOS. They are legal documents organised in logical sections so skip the fluff and go to the ones you care about like the handling of your data. As you read more TOS, you’ll become better at detecting the patterns and won’t need more than a couple of minutes to read what’s important to you.
4. The Privacy Policy is often more important than the TOS, regarding what will truly affect you. Start with that.
5. Always open TOS and Privacy Policy links, even if you’re not going to read them. You might be surprised to find how many of them are broken links. That’s usually the sign of a shadier company that you should skip.
I agree. But your point is tangential to mine. My comment offers tips to those who think reading TOS is an insurmountable task (it isn’t), not commentary on why the current system is broken (it is, but I feel most people already agree on that).
Even if it takes 10 minutes per ToS update per service, that's still a good 100 of hours in your entire life (this they don't provide diffs) just to do that.
> Even if it takes 10 minutes per ToS update per service, that's still a good 100 of hours in your entire life
That would mean 600 TOS, which means you’re not following points 1 and 2. Furthermore, as soon as you find anything objectionable, you stop reading. After the first couple of them you don’t need 10 minutes.
> It should be illegal.
There have been instances of unenforceable TOS, and some countries are pushing for contracts to have mandatory summaries of each section. Find out about it in your country and see how you can help.
1. Use fewer services. This limits the amount you have to read or worry about changes.
2. Of the services you use, limit the personal information you provide. Disposable emails and making up names and birthdates (when they are mandatory) all help. Only do this for services where you don’t care if your account is closed. Particularly impactful for those services which make it a pain to delete an account.
3. Don’t read the full TOS. They are legal documents organised in logical sections so skip the fluff and go to the ones you care about like the handling of your data. As you read more TOS, you’ll become better at detecting the patterns and won’t need more than a couple of minutes to read what’s important to you.
4. The Privacy Policy is often more important than the TOS, regarding what will truly affect you. Start with that.
5. Always open TOS and Privacy Policy links, even if you’re not going to read them. You might be surprised to find how many of them are broken links. That’s usually the sign of a shadier company that you should skip.