Phil'sown dot Org

A Service Agreement is Better Than a Terms of Service

A woman named Ariel Waldman was harassed on Twitter, and complained about it for two years. She asked them to take action because the harassment was in violation of Twitter's terms of service. Ariel sounded off about it on her blog and other people have posted about it too, like Violet Blue.

In response, after two years, Twitter has decided the best course of action is to modify their terms of service. Thomas Hawk says it's like changing the law after the fact of a crime, which doesn't help the victim.

My thought is that by having a terms of service, Twitter's stance is self-protection from the get-go. Changing the terms of service to further wash their hands of the situation is actually keeping in character with a "terms of service", if you think about it.

"Terms of service" feels like: "Here are our terms for your use of our service." Get my drift?

What's really needed for online "tools" that are going to support a community is a service agreement. In major technology contracts or services a consumer can expect what's called "service level agreement". A service agreement would have more the feel of: "Here's what you will agree to abide by with your use of the service, and in return, here's what we will do for you if there are problems."

I think more sites should adopt a service agreement instead of, or in addition to a terms of service.