Shortly after she and three colleagues left Discovery to start Brightrock in 2011, Suzanne Stevens told me part of their strategy was to simplify life insurance by completely rewriting the T&Cs – the legal small print that comes standard in life policies. Their approach appeared to have worked – last year Brightrock reported more than two million South Africans are insured by it.
Where Brightrock ventured, however, the US’s pioneering tech companies have gone the other way. Visual Capitalist pulled terms of service agreement from 14 of the most popular internet services, from Facebook and Tinder to Uber, and discovered they are so long and full of legal jargon only a tiny fraction of users bother to actually read them.
Longest, by some distance, is Microsoft whose online T&Cs run to an astonishing 15,260 words, more than the whole of Sun Tzu’s classic book Art of War (12,035 words) and not far behind William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (17,121 words). Shortest of the 14 is Instagram at almost 2,500 words (10 mins to read), with Netflix next best (2,629 – 11 mins) and then Youtube (3,308 – 14 mins).
Not surprisingly, Visual Capitalist researchers found the vast majority of users agree to these conditions without reading them. Seems few care enough to read what personal information tech giants routinely harvest in return for the convenience of their services. Much less think about how having given our “permission”, this personal information gets on-sold to the highest bidding marketers. Little wonder campaigners for greater online privacy like Jaron Lanier struggle to get their message heard.
*Today’s episode of Rational Radio at noon features former SAA director Russell Loubser who led the board walkout in 2012 warning that the airline was on an unsustainable path. He also mentioned that Dudu Myeni was the worst director he’d ever come across. Watch out for the recording later today. Biznews Premium members can participate by posting questions during the live transmission from noon, but must register beforehand – here’s the link: https://attendee.
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