The original note, as written at the time
In my amendment, there should be at least two alternative agreements that users can choose from. Each option should have a key set of implications and benefits named and brought to the front in the agreements. This should ease the authoritarian pressure implied by the single agreement that is almost impossible to read, for a tool which often is required on the go.
Ongoing development
Every terms-of-service screen should offer at least two alternative agreements, each with its key implications and benefits brought to the front — so that the user is choosing rather than submitting.
The single agreement is an authoritarian instrument, whatever its content. It presents one arrangement, unreadable, at the moment you need the tool, and the only decision available is accept. That is not consent; it is a formality that both parties understand to be a formality.
Two named options change the nature of the act. One might be: you get the full service and we process your data for advertising. The other: you pay a small fee and nothing is profiled. Both are legitimate businesses, and a person can now say which they prefer.
The requirement that implications and benefits be named at the front is what makes it real. A two-option screen that says see full terms for details has reproduced the original problem in duplicate. The comparison has to be at the level of consequence: what happens to your data, who can see it, what you can get back.
Two options also puts competitive pressure where it belongs. If a provider must name what they take, the price of taking becomes visible, and the market can respond.
The risk is that the choice architecture is abused — one option presented as Recommended, the other buried, the free one quietly worse. That is a design ethics problem and it is testable: if more than a small fraction choose the same option every time, the choice was not real.
Consent that cannot be refused is not consent. Two doors make it a door.