HOW MANY WORDS DID YOU AGREE TO? — Dr. Boli’s Celebrated Magazine.

To make a donation to the Document Foundation, which develops LibreOffice: 26,554 words. For the privilege of making a charitable donation, you must agree to terms and conditions that add up to more than three times the text of the entire United States Constitution, with all the amendments and the attestations.

It is almost enough to make one feel uncharitable.

We mentioned earlier that Firefox has kept its user agreement down to manageable levels. Here is an interesting question. Compared to Edge or Chrome, has Firefox suffered any worse legal troubles? For a graduate student in sociology, it would be a fascinating study: in similar products or services, how is the number of words in the terms and conditions correlated with the number of legal problems the product or service has faced?

Dr. Boli has a prediction—a hypothesis that could be tested by our equally hypothetical graduate student. The prediction is that no correlation will be found between the length of the terms and conditions and the immunity from unpleasant legal difficulties: that the multiplication of legalistic verbiage creates no measurable reduction in legal liability. But he is willing to be proved wrong by anyone who will take the trouble to prove him wrong. Note that “it stands to reason” will not be accepted as proof. “It stands to reason” is a style of argument reserved for Dr. Boli himself.

Comments

Charles Louis de Secondcat, baron de La Breed et de Montemeow says:

May 27, 2026 at 4:51 pm

This is not precisely what Dr. Boli asked for, but with the magic of AI, we identified a paper answering a related question — does readability of insurance contracts influence the willingness of consumers to sue their insurer if they deny a claim?

Boom, Desmet, and Dam answer as follows: maybe slightly.

“Our findings suggest that readability increases the trust and confidence of the consumer in the sense that it increases their expectations of the claim. Moreover, we have found partial evidence to suggest that reading ease also increases the consumer’s willingness to engage in legal action in the case of subsequent claim denial.”

“… Improved reading ease raised expectations of coverage which in turn was an important determinant of the willingness to seek information, file complaints, or undertake legal action. However, contrary to our expectations, we did not find a direct effect of reading ease on this willingness to engage in conflict. One of the explanations for this may be that although the difference in reading ease between the “hard” and “easy” to read versions is in itself significant, the extent of the effect of this is rather minimal..”

Van Boom, W.H., Desmet, P. & Van Dam, M. “If It’s Easy to Read, It’s Easy to Claim”—The Effect of the Readability of Insurance Contracts on Consumer Expectations and Conflict Behaviour. J Consum Policy 39, 187–197 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10603-016-9317-9

Once insurers have read this study, we are positively assured that they will race to ensure their contracts are as clear as possible, out of the goodness of their munificent hearts.