The internet often feels like wading through an oversized portable toilet. In that same spirit, a U.K.-based company that offers free WiFi (very easily) got 22,000 people to agree to clean portable toilets at "local festivals and events" using a clever trick: Just sneak the agreement into the terms and conditions, i.e. that shit no one ever reads, even when said shit includes a clause about cleaning actual shit.
Purple, a provider of public WiFi, added a 1000-hour community service term to its terms and conditions agreement in an effort to highlight a very obvious "lack of consumer awareness," Mashable reported Thursday. Amazingly, the amount of people who noticed what they were signing up for was disturbingly low, and by "disturbingly low" I mean only one fucking person (reportedly) noticed it.
"Hidden among Purple's usual terms and conditions for two weeks was the Community Service Clause: 'The user may be required, at Purple's discretion, to carry out 1,000 hours of community service,'" Purple announced in a news release Thursday. The "community service," which Purple will of course not be requiring anyone to actually do, included:
- Removing animal waste from local parks
- Hugging stray cats and dogs
- Manually relieving sewer blockages, which sounds particularly fun
- Cleaning portable toilets at festivals and other events
- Painting snail shells to brighten up their existence, which sounds like something the snails would definitely not appreciate
- Scraping used chewing gum off the streets
"Our experiment shows it's all too easy to tick a box and consent to something unfair," Purple CEO Gavin Wheeldon said. No shit.
