TLDR Act: What Will it Mean for Your Business?
TLDR Act: What Will it Mean for Your Business?
A new act has been proposed by Congresswoman Lori Trahan (D-MA-03), Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), and Senator Ben Ray Luján (D-NM). This new act is called the Terms-of-service Labeling, Design, and Readability (TLDR) Act. The bill is a clever play on words with the TLDR being an internet acronym meaning ‘too long-didn’t read’. The bill was proposed to the House of Representatives on January 13, 2022. This act essentially means that all terms of service agreements must be summarized in language that can be read and understood easily by those who are not familiar with the legal jargon used within them. Trahan, Cassidy, and Luján summarize what the statements are to include in a one-page write-up.
They stated “these summary statements:
- Must state what sensitive information is collected and whether it is necessary for the services provided.
- State whether the consumer/user can delete their own data and provide a walk-through on how.
- What legal liabilities the consumer/user can face, their rights, mandatory arbitrations, and class action waivers if they use the service.
- Must provide a changelog
- Must provide the past three years of data breaches.
- Small businesses are to be exempt
- The Federal Trade Commission is to put into law the rules pertaining to the summary.” (Trahan, Cassidy, and Luján, 2022).
What does this mean for your business if you are not a small business? It will definitely mean more transparency. Transparency is a good thing because consumers want to be able to trust your organization. After all, customer loyalty can be influenced by how much trust they have in you. If they have other options to choose from, why would they want to stay with an organization they no longer trust? This act can be a good thing for businesses to draw in new consumers and keep the ones they have. Even though this bill is geared towards larger organizations, it is still a good idea for businesses of all sizes.
Web developer and web designer companies will want to keep an eye on this bill as it will likely affect their own organizations and compliances. This is something necessary, especially when performing web services for their clients.
While this bill has bipartisan support right now, it still remains to be seen if there will be more support behind it. The proposed bill is definitely something to keep an eye on so that businesses can stay in compliance with it if it does pass.
