In the physical goods world, there is no company that is allowed to dump products onto market and pretend like their customers do not exist. If their product cause harm to the consumer, their products will get recalled or they'd get sued.
Google has somehow allowed itself to infinitely scale their users but also infinitely shrink their liabilities/duty by binding all users to their ToS which foists arbitration on all of them.
My position is that google is subject to the same laws as physical goods companies, and held to the same standard as they are for product recalls. No more, no less.
I do not claim that some sort of utopia of ultimate consumer protection exists. It does not for google, nor for physical goods companies.
> Yeah, lawyers are just lining up to represent those homeless folks, elderly grandmothers, and people who just don't get tech.
Represent them for what precisely? The tort of not providing a good user interface?
I don't think wealth has much to do with the lack of google being sued here. Wealth may buy better lawyers, but it doesn't create grounds for a lawsuit out of thin air.
> Clearly you've never been poor.
Life often sucks and is not fair. It is not google's responsibility to eradicate poverty
The librarian's letter that we're commenting on describes many concrete ways in which people are getting harmed and google getting away with doing nothing.
In the physical goods world, there is no company that is allowed to dump products onto market and pretend like their customers do not exist. If their product cause harm to the consumer, their products will get recalled or they'd get sued.
Google has somehow allowed itself to infinitely scale their users but also infinitely shrink their liabilities/duty by binding all users to their ToS which foists arbitration on all of them.