You have the right to understand what you’re signing up for.
And to be fair, right now every app or social network you use does present terms and conditions to you to read and accept. But who has time to read a fifteen-foot long scroll of technical jargon when they’re trying to install an app? No one, and in some cases, that’s what these tech giants are counting on.
“Ticking the box, ‘I have read and agree to the Terms,’ is the biggest lie on the web today,” said Dima Yarovinsky, the artist behind the I AGREE installation. Yarovinsky worked on I AGREE while at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem in 2017, and since then we’ve partnered with him to install it at events around the world.
“Almost no one really reads the terms of service they agree to, despite agreeing to various terms on a regular basis,” said Yarovinksy. “My main goal was to emphasize how small and helpless we are against these giant corporations.”
While few people want to take the time to read the full fifteen feet of Snapchat’s terms of service, it does make quite an impression when printed out in 12-point font and lined up against all the other top social network’s TOS. In one glance, it’s easy to see how much you’ve agreed to without even realizing it.
With a simple click, you can give consent to have your data scraped, stored, monetized and reused across the internet in ways that you can only imagine, but it’s never as easy to figure out how to gain control of your own data once it’s out there. And that’s not right.
You have the right to own your life—and your data.
That’s why Firefox data policies are simple: we don’t collect what we don’t need, we tell you what we do collect in easily understandable language and we keep your data safe, never sold.
Learn more about our privacy philosophy, and if you’re in San Francisco, see I AGREE at Accelerate Good, April 3 – 4.
