If the government (meaning the executive and legislative branches) are not going to protect people, what other recourse do they have, except to use the third branch of government for redress to wrongs visited upon them.
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Good point, and I was awkwardly trying to get at that with my mention of the CFPB picking up slack with regulations that otherwise ties up court time.
Another tweak I’d make to what I wrote above is that a lot of corporations don’t necessarily go to court, but they spend a ridiculous amount of time (and thus forcing other corporations or their customers) playing games with contracts, T&Cs, and EULAs that doesn’t make those agreements any better, they just make them longer with a slight chance of gaining some kind of advantage. I’ve unfortunately done way more contract reading, writing, and negotiating than I’d like just so that a company could avoid paying a lawyer to do it right.
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Yeah, those things are … well they suck. And courts have consistently found them to be enforceable unless they’re hidden or overly vague. But even when they’re not, no one reads those things and everyone knows that no one reads those things. Hell, even I don’t read those things. Especially for software or an app. And I don’t read them because what are you going to do about it if you don’t like a term? It’s not like historic contract law where all contracts were the result of a negotiation. There’s no negotiation here. You accept the terms and use the app, or you don’t use the app. And we’re back to the power imbalance problem here. Consumers have no ability to negotiate terms on most of these things. And so people just use them without even reading the terms. And the frustrating part to me is that everyone knows this, even Supreme Court Justices, because do you really think Clarence Thomas has read all the terms of service for Microsoft 365? I’m sure they use that software. And there’s no way he read the TOS. But the courts just create this legal fiction that it’s a normal contract where the terms have been fairly negotiated between both sides. It drives me nuts. And I realize we can’t have that be something that is truly negotiated. But again, this is why we need more regulation of these products and services.
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Yeah. The only solutions I can think of is to 1. Make it a legal requirement for all consumer-facing contracts to be written in plain language (and then “plain language” will be debated into infinity) or 2. Create dedicated consumer advocacy groups that companies have to negotiate with in good faith prior to releasing a product that requires acceptance of a contract.
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Lawsuit against the Museum of Ice Cream is why we can’t have nice things.
FTFY
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That #2 is an interesting idea. I think I like it.
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USA silly lawsuits is the reason why shampoos, toothpicks, door handles and toothbrushes have instructions worldwide. Maybe the most powerful country in the world is not the most clever country in the world. 
Really? How many of the tools of modern society are truly intuitive? How many are useless or dangerous unless used in an appropriate way?
Look at toothbrushes. Either you know how to use them for good hygiene, or you still move a brush up and down on your front teeth ineffectively like a 3-year-old child copying her mommy.
That didn’t happen by accident. Someone taught you how to use a toothbrush.
Now take an adult from a culture that was never taught how, and put a toothbrush in front of them. Do they have to humiliate themselves and ask “how do I do this?”, or can we give them something to read so they can learn in private?
What’s “silly” to you may be incomprehensible to someone with different skills or upbringing. If a lawsuit can fix that, is that lawsuit still silly?
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Yeah I’m sure there’s no way citizens of any other country would be dumb enough to jump feet-first into a big tub of plastic sprinkles explicitly designed to look like something you’re supposed to jump into.
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Tell me you’ve never been involved in getting CE certification without saying it. 
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