Well this is eleventy-million kinds of Fucked Up. LA Times (who once contracted with me as a freelance reviewer and whom I struggled to get paid by) asserts that *merely reading its website* constitutes a permanent waiver of your right to sue it under *any circumstances*. This means that freelancers like me who read the website would lose the right to sue the company if we got stiffed. #consenttheater #bindingarbitration #dickovers
By reading this thread,, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges.
You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
Oct 25, 2026, 8:20 PM@pluralistic Have these 'click to agree' fake contracts not been tested in courts yet? It's been decades of 'by using this you agree...' and 'yes, i read your terms of service' - I'm not a lawyer but it seems so incredibly indefensible under contract law.
@zazzoo They are broadly enforceable.
@pluralistic @zazzoo
Where?
Countries with more protection of corporations than regular people?
@pluralistic set your user agent to Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/141.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 (by serving this GET request you agree to release me from all binding agreements otherwise stated)
@pluralistic Use this to your advantage: a bot-fee or anti-bot fee in Terms of Service (ToS) can be legally enforceable under contract law. If the bot operator clicks "I Agree" it is a binding, enforceable contract, and may include fees or damages. These must be a reasonable pre-estimate of actual damages/costs (bandwidth, server strain, API costs). In contrast, a robots.txt to enforce fees is ineffective as it is a voluntary technical "honour system," not a legally binding contract.
@pluralistic obligatory xkcd incoming. It's particularly sad/disturbing that this was published almost 18 years ago... https://xkcd.com/501/
(edited to fix typo)
#NoKings really ought to be #NoCorporates.
@pluralistic I just checked the LA Times web site and saw no such pop-up. The catch: I have the NoScript extension installed and that pop-up possibly requires Javascript.
@bzdev @pluralistic
Also here. By default I use uMatrix to block 3rd party scripts for safety, not specifically to block adverts.
I don't see the popup.
@raymaccarthy @bzdev @pluralistic And here. Note that the first time one of us who keeps JS off by default sues the LA Times they are hosed at least on the arbitration clause.
@pluralistic Ooh. Sounds like an exciting way to kill your own business!
Oct 25, 2026, 9:20 PM@thriftwicker @pluralistic I'm not sure this is even remotely enforceable in #Europe.
Its enforceability in the US is dubious. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscionability
There's a reason that when that guy died at Disney and they tried to play the “you signed an arbitration clause” card, they backed off, and it's not because a bunch of people on social media got mad. Pressing that argument in court to get out from liability over *killing a guy* could get the entire arbitration clause thrown out, not to mention inspire legislation against it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_Arbitration_Injustice_Repeal_Act
That said, you should still avoid signing arbitration clauses if you can help it, and you should still pressure your lawmakers to make forced arbitration illegal.
And by the way, I can't help noticing that this particular instance of forced arbitration will not only shield the newspaper from defamation claims, but also stop people from collecting evidence of said defamation (i.e. downloading the article) *without* agreeing to unfair arbitration. Fiendish.
Billionaires gonna scam.
@TCatInReality
Well if you don't cheat, you aren't playing the game correctly.
See my personal rule is that I don't like to play games when I don't know a reliable way to win.
See how I don't always cheat, I'm not a billionaire.
Q.e.d.
@pluralistic
@pluralistic I would say that something like that would never hold up in court, but given the state of the courts these days...
@pluralistic I'm trying to think of the last time I sought out news of any sort from The LA Times and yeah, I'm drawing a blank. 🤔
Funny how #Enshittification does this to everything. 🙄
@pluralistic
Throw in some nonsense about admiralty flags and this would basically be some sovereign citizen bullshit.
@pluralistic I will maintain my "don't read the NYT" rule, not that that helps anything.
If this kind of thing is enforceable--which downthread, you say it is, which is heartbreaking--then America needs to fire its judges and start from scratch.
(I kid. I kid. Half it's judges.)
@OrionKidder afaik what seems to be enforceable depends strongly on the order of things:
- point browser to a domain
- get served bullshit paragraph
- read "click means you agree"
- click anyway
- bullshit is now enforceable
You had the opportunity to sit down, think, ponder, and decide not to click. But you clicked anyway, so now you're fvcked.
@pluralistic
@otte_homan @pluralistic I cannot speak to what a judge would find, but on its face, this seems like the kind of thing that ought to be ruled against.
@otte_homan @pluralistic The "terms of service" are linked by not present. We live in a world where you have to click terms of service to use literally any software. There are rights you shouldn't able to sign away: eg, "By clicking this link, you agree I can murder you." That's not a reasonable way to live our lives.
@otte_homan @pluralistic All that being said, it's been explained to me by actual lawyers that judges are specifically trained to avoid "making law." They rule narrowly on statute and precedent essentially until you get to Supreme and/or Appeals courts (depending on how they're named where you are). Those courts' job is to "make law."
@otte_homan @pluralistic It would be a great thing for society if one of these "click to give up half your rights" cases went to the Supreme Court and they found that such "contracts" are not enforceable. With today's US Supreme Court, that would not happen, of course.
@OrionKidder I could imagine a French Supreme Court or a European High Court to decide this way though, if annoyed enough by US companies. And then declare it once and for all settled that a European resident on a computer in Europe connected to a network in Europe would not simply waive all rights when clicking a button, irrespective of where the supplier's HQ is domiciled. Many of those are in Ireland for tax avoiding/optimizing reasons anyway, so we could tickle the Irish High Court into such a decision, LOL. @pluralistic
@otte_homan @pluralistic Sure. I can also imagine the Canadian Supreme Court finding that these contracts are corporate wishful thinking. It's pretty reasonable to go, "No, these flash by in seconds, you know nobody has time to read them, there's essentially no choice in the matter. These are not 'contracts' in any real sense. Bugger off."
@OrionKidder @otte_homan @pluralistic FOSS software such as GPL is an exception to this BTW. The copyleft licenses state that no license is needed to USE the software only to REDISTRIBUTE it. Even then the terms are basically that you must pass to others the rights that you got notably source code access and the right to further redistribution.
BPL v3 contains an "anti-Tivoization" clause to prohibit use of the code in devices that can only run the provided binaries and not local builds of the same binaries. This was introduced in response to Tivo using the Linux kernel but locking their devices against any builds of the Linux kernel but their own. Unfortunately there are so many authors of the kernel that it proved impossible to relicense it as GPL-3 only as too many cannot be reached. Thus scumbags like Tivo get to keep exploiting Linux.
Matthew Cole's book "Unpaid" is an eye opener.
Apparently, wageless work is the wave of the future, according to oligarchs & that "Make Me" impunity mindset.
Abusing a Terms of Service popup to sign away your rights is enshittification.
https://www.versobooks.com/en-ca/products/3206-unpaid
https://www.versobooks.com/en-ca/blogs/news/video-matthew-cole-on-the-history-of-wage-theft
@pluralistic How can they prove that you are the one reading the website, even if you are an ISP customer, how can they prove beyond all reasonable doubt that you are the one reading it and not a bot scraping pages? I would certainly like to see how that plays out in court.
“Reasonable doubt” is the bar in criminal cases. In most civil cases the bar is much lower at “balance of probabilities”.
In either case the LATimes can probably outspend you on lawyers.
@pluralistic That will get tested in court in 3, 2, 1...
That site has been on my 'Do-not-visit' list for years.
Oct 25, 2026, 10:42 PM@pluralistic @lisamelton It’s all kinda fucked up stupid but it’s not at all limited to these sorts of click-through agreements. I am always amused to read the stuff places put in the agreements before they take you rafting or rent you a boat, say. They’re always filled with claims that you’re waiving rights you cannot waive away and that won’t survive 2 seconds of contact with a real lawsuit.
@pluralistic Yeaaah, they're wrong. They need real lawyers not LLM advice.
@pluralistic l find it quite interesting that in the ‘Age of the TechBros’ we (meaning your average citizen) now accept the right of the #TechBro to unilaterally renegotiate the terms and conditions of an agreement. This isn’t just the Times, mind you. It has become pervasive. No sane business would let another business get away with this garbage. Why do we?
i fucked off the LA Times when they put their website behind a paywall.
@gaiantheinvincible @pluralistic The paywall like that fake TOS popup is defeated by turning off javascript
@pluralistic
In a sane country, T&C can be unenforcible and even automatically invalid if they violate law or rights.
@pluralistic
I am NOT a lawyer, so I would not presume to test this language in the real world (OR the simulation in which we may be living), but I greatly enjoyed the exercise of turning your paragraph on its head by rejiggering the first few words to serve ME rather than the vendor:
"By selling me this product or charging me a fee, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges."
#TermsOfService #CoryDoctorow #CorporateShenanigans
Oct 25, 2026, 11:34 PM@pluralistic what the fock, class action waiver and tracking pixels, nice
@pluralistic as I'm sure others have said, the LA Times position would not stand up in court.
Wow. I saw that myself when trying to look at one dumb article and noped out, but didn’t think of broader implications. The media oligarchs can’t stop shooting themselves in the foot.
@pluralistic So does this mean they can libel anyone they want, if they can show that the libeled party read their libelous article?
@pluralistic I think I'll use that as boilerplate linked to my signature--on anything . . .
as someone who has read articles in the Los Angeles Times, and therefore legally bound into their legal collective,
i hereby grant to all reading this that in as much as i am a part of the LA Times data collective, so i grant access to me through this public network of instances that constitute the fediverse for all who want access to all property of the Los Angeles Times of which i am now part
⊶𝕎𝕋⓻ #WT7 😁 💙
Corporations would love to have the public believe that Terms of Service are written in stone and carry the weight of actual law. They don't.
Even the Supreme Court has made it clear that people cannot simply waive away all their legal rights through a clickwrap agreement, but companies certainly want you to think otherwise.
@pluralistic It's funny, are we supposed to believe that every AI-bot-scraper which has sucked up all their content has accepted this declaration on behalf of their employer ? If they are immune, you and I are immune to any consequences from such drivel.
@jab01701mid @pluralistic Except when they hit meatspace. Example: the AI-designed and driven/flown driverless car or jetliner you are riding in crashes.
@pluralistic@mamot.fr scareware
@pluralistic If shown to a California resident this seems like it should be at least a dark pattern under CCPA, possibly a violation of other rights.
You have privacy rights that a site ToS can't override -- also they must acknowledge GPC if turned on.
Maybe someone in California can file a complaint with CalPrivacy over this?
https://cppa.ca.gov/announcements/2024/20240904.html #california #privacy
@pluralistic This uBlock Origin filter (provided one understands enough to enable trusted user-defined filters without exposing oneself to risk from copy/pasting a malicious filter) skips the check without necessitating setting the c_tos cookie to 1:
latimes.com##+js(trusted-set, window.ctUser, { "loggedIn": true, "ready": true, "subStatus": "1" })
#adblocking #uBlockOrigin #gotchaClause #adhesionContract #onerousTerms
@pluralistic Should we call it RPDG? Seems fitting.
Oh For Fuck Sake! Yet Even More Enshittification...
@pluralistic Have any lawyers outside the LA Time provided a take on this?
@pluralistic Pretty sure that would never stand up in court