Submitted 11 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
TikTok requires users to “forever waive” rights to sue over past harms | TikTok may be seeking to avoid increasingly high costs of mass arbitration.::TikTok may be seeking to avoid increasingly high costs of mass arbitration.
I didn’t think legal contract could contain “forever”? Which is why Disney’s contract has the death of the last living monarch.
Last living monarch of … Just in general?
A contract related to Disney in Florida wanted a forever, couldn’t legally do it, but you could do a timeframe from a person, so they picked the last British monarch after a certain birth cutoff, essentially giving them something like 300 years (very rough estimate don’t remember well enough) in a contract that wasn’t intended to really do more than 100.
One of my public utilities just updated their ToS to waive a right to class action for users. Utter shit.
Imagine if our lawmakers would take the time to make giving up legal recourse in contracts illegal. Not just unenforceable, but just having it in the terms be an immediate, actionable violation.
While we’re wishing, how about jail time for lawmakers who vote for obviously-unconstitutional laws?
And people still use TikTok. Baffling.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
According to The New York Times, changes that TikTok “quietly” made to its terms suggest that the popular app has spent the back half of 2023 preparing for a wave of legal battles.
Perhaps most significantly, TikTok also added a section to its terms that mandates that all legal complaints be filed within one year of any alleged harm caused by using the app.
Then, in 2022, TikTok defeated a Pennsylvania lawsuit alleging that the app was liable for a child’s death because its algorithm promoted a deadly “Blackout Challenge.”
The same year, a bipartisan coalition of 44 state attorneys general announced an investigation to determine whether TikTok violated consumer laws by allegedly putting young users at risk.
As new information becomes available to consumers through investigations and lawsuits, there are concerns that users may become aware of harms that occurred before TikTok’s one-year window to file complaints and have no path to seek remedies.
One lawyer representing more than 1,000 guardians and minors claiming TikTok-related harms, Kyle Roche, told the Times that he is challenging TikTok’s updated terms.
The original article contains 748 words, the summary contains 179 words. Saved 76%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
Hasn’t stuff like this been repeatedly ruled illegal and unenforceable?
wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 months ago
Yup, but it only matters if you have the means to argue it in court.
DudeImMacGyver@sh.itjust.works 11 months ago
The system works*!
zik@lemmy.world 11 months ago
As far as I know only the US would even humor such stupidity. In my country (Australia) they wouldn’t even let it go to court since the common law right to legal justice overrides contract law.