Comment by FridgeSeal

To add to your points:

> Could people read terms of service…

Even if they do read licences and such, companies have a vested interest in making them as complicated, obtuse and self-serving that you have close to no recourse. It’s weasel-worded to the nth degree. They also change them largely at their leisure, and if the new terms are bad, again, there’s often very little you can do.

“If consumers don’t like it, they wouldn’t buy it” is the other lie that’s successfully kept itself alive. Consumers are kept time and spare-resource poor, and are largely presented with a predefined set of options to choose from that the companies at play feel like presenting us with. Rarely is there an _actual_ varied choice. Only the illusion. Combine that with scenarios in other industries like enterprise sales where the “customer” is an exec and the user just gets lumped with some garbage software.