A recent Black Mirror episode has become a cautionary tale for why you need to read the terms and conditions online.
Joan is Awful depicts a young woman whose life becomes the inspiration for a TV show, supposedly without her consent. When she tries to take legal action against the streaming service, she realises she unknowingly agreed for her life to be used in the terms and conditions.
Newstalk Tech Correspondent Jess Kelly said she didn’t know whether to be scared or to laugh after warning people about this for so long.
“How many times have I said this over the last 15 years,” she told The Hard Shoulder.
“This should be shown to every single person with a smartphone as to why you should read your terms and conditions.”
Jess said when you really look through the terms and conditions of sites and apps, you realise how much you’re giving away with no idea.
“If you go to any of these services, if you read through the terms of use in terms of who owns your data, who owns your photos, how ads are served to you, the presumptions companies make about you,” she said.
2R8PCYC Annie Murphy, "Black Mirror" Season 6 (2023). Photo credit: Nick Wall/Netflix“It’s always been this seesaw of ‘if you don’t give us everything, you’re not going to get as good a service’.”
In the previous terms and conditions of Facebook Messenger, for example, the terms and conditions said Meta could access your phone’s call log – allowing Facebook to archive the calls you receive and make, even with people who don’t have their own Facebook.
Jess said things have improved since the Cambridge Analytica scandal was exposed and GDPR was introduced in the EU – but there are still “bigger consequences” to our lives.
“It's something we do need to take a greater appreciation for,” she said. “It's not enough to accept the terms and conditions and then moan when something goes wrong.”
Reading time
It isn’t an easy read, however. The average reader would take 250 hours to read through the terms and conditions of all the sites and apps they use.
Spotify has the longest terms and conditions, taking the average reader 40 minutes to parse through.
Despite that, Jess urged people to listen to Black Mirror’s “cautionary tale” and read the terms of use.
“You can take an element of control – it just takes a bit of your time,” she said.
And in case anyone was wondering, Netflix’s terms and conditions do not give themselves permission to turn your life into a TV show.
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