When 22,000 volunteered to clean toilets 

If you've 'legally' contracted over your first born, but the entity you've made the arrangement with does not retrieve the child, can you sue them for child support? They've claimed a responsibility, but you're taking on the full financial burden of raising the child. Seems like a clear claim.

My sister was looking over a contract at work many years ago, and hidden on the last page was the phrase "...and if we have missed anything, the Wombles will deal with it."

RU-vid viewers might be interested in knowing that the description of this episode of the podcast had a link to some terms and conditions with a giveaway hidden in there. Four people found it before they revealed it on Twitter.

This is my question! Hooray :)

I got it perhaps halfway through, when Tom said it was not entirely willingly and would not probably hold up in court. I did not hear about these particular instances, but I am familiar with cases of shenanigans in the EULA.

To give those people in the first few months maybe a bit of credit, even as a dork who DOES tend to at least skim EULAs... I feel like if I read "we'll give you $1000 if you email us" in one, I'd believe it to be a scam and uninstall the software rather than actually email them!

Not only people don't read terms and conditions, companies themselves also often don't read terms and conditions set by themselves. There is a well-known South Korean example of so-called Big Jang agreements: so many websites copied them from elsewhere that there were a lot of tongue-in-cheek agreements with nonsensical meme-inspired definitions, like "the Agreement is subject to be _filleted_ _and_ _deboned,_ following the cancellation from either the User or the Website"...

In the series 2 episode of the Channel 4 sitcom "The IT Crowd" titled "Return of the Golden Child" a website that worked out the date you would die was featured. The web site URL was briefly shown onscreen, and at the time of the original broadcast there was a web site at that address. It required visitors to agree to terms and conditions. If anyone bothered to read the T&C's they would have found details how to win the laptop Moss was using in the episode.

I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding of US contract law is that there must be a "meeting of the minds" (agreement of expectations) for any contract to be valid. So any conditions in a EULA/ToS that aren't expected or reasonable can probably be contested easily in court, given that most people understand that no one reads though them all and the only meeting of the minds are the usual terms anyone would expect with or without anything in writing.

"Are there islands for that" ADAM NO

There was a rock band who who included in their contract they used for appearances that they would require a large bowel of M&M's with all of the yellow M&M's removed. They had nothing against yellow M&M's, they included that so they could tell who read the contract and who had not. The got the M&M's usually, but most of the time it included yellow M&M's

There was a short plot arc in Legends of Tomorrow where a demon literally did this. He included giving up your soul to him in the ToS of a mobile app, and from that was able to gather thousands upon thousands of souls, because no one reads the ToS 😂

that "we will explain after" went way too unnoticed

oh man.. "Are there islands for that?" might be the darkest thing I've heard on Lateral to date.

I remembered the "giving your firstborn child away" at once, it was in the EULA (End User License Agreement) or TOS (Terms of Service) of some software package, either audio or file sharing software (I forgot which one).

If you agree to a WiFi T&C and it has clauses completely unrelated to WiFi, they are unexpected and therefore void even without a court ruling so in most parts of Europe. Just saying... That's the same reason why Microsoft (or any Software company for that matter) can't enforce their ToS here, because you have to agree to them AFTER you already purchased the software.

The "Herod" clause is way too funny 😂

My contracts professor in law school said he never reads the terms and conditions. There's an argument that you aren't liable for anything unexpected and unreasonable in there and even though the argument is not 100% solid (and he couldn't recommend others follow his lead), he found the gamble of not reading them to be the better bet.

Yeah, my work has a program where you can sign up for a membership and it says that you're required to show your membership card at the door in order to use the membership benefits and people get so angry when I ask for it. My manager even printed the whole thing out and highlighted the relevant area and it's literally on the first page.

At uni, I heard once about a professor who hid in the course syllabus directions to get like $1 or $10 (can't recall amount exactly) by either contacting the prof or going to a locker. It took until the end of the semester for it to be claimed, proving to the professor that no one read to the end of the syllabus. The professor for a course I TA-ed might do this trick again after I suggested it too him because no one was reading the course syllabus and standards (it's an engineering course).

Fortunately, any terms of a contract that are “against public policy” would not stand up in court. For example, if someone wrote out a “legal” signed contract to pay you to kill somebody, and you took the money, but refused, and they tried to sue you for breach of contract, the suit would be thrown out of court, but you could keep the money. However, if the court had reason to believe that you CONSIDERED the offer, you could be tried for the crime of conspiracy to commit murder. The offer or of the money would definitely be guilty of attempted murder (the receiver might be offered a plea deal if they testified against the offerer). In the case of a contract to give up your child, since most states and nations want adoptions to be regulated, they would throw out the contract as attempted trafficking.

I paused at the start to think about it because it just seemed so weird. After some time with no thoughts, $1'000 made me thing of iphones. Some people would blurt out random stuff in desperation to get one, so maybe getting an iphone would be worth cleaning toilets for 22'000 people and giving up a child for 6, but if they were asked to give their iphone to someone else they wouldn't accept $1'000 for it, but then that's different to 'what would you do for an iphone'. Giving up something then made me think it was a 'would you rather' question, specifically, 'would you rather give access to your phone to a random stranger or ...' followed by each of these, and people would rather clean toilets, give up a child and reject an easy $1'000 (except 1 person found after 4 months) instead.

I'm hooked to these videos.

This one had me frustrated, because I remembered reading about this at the time, and it wasn't until Tom pointed out Willingly, I remembered the incident, and As Vanessa said I remember thinking at the time, I'm still not going to read the T&C's.

There is also a thing about 'paper towns' but for end user liscence agreements. I think it was an apple product where in the terms and conditions you agreed to not use the product to do nuclear fission; and its so dumb and out there that if the same condition happened to show up in another terms and conditions, you can definitely say they copied the apple one and just changed the names around.

The first one I got straight away even halfway through the question

I thought they would all get it as soon as Anthony said his line at 1:50

Before Tom even finished reading the question I was immediately thinking of the human centipede.

I actually knew this one, took a minute but i remembered a story about a $1000 reward being given to someone who read the terms and conditions and no one claimed it for a while, and once i remembered that, the rest made sense. i realised that the people in this agreed to these terms without reading them

I just started watching it and I think I already know. User agreements.

I immediately knew what this is, a rare occasion for me

Did Adam look this one up too? 😄 just kidding! love your channel

i remembered this one :)

This one was way too easy. Never heard of it and I figured it out before the end of the second repeat.

I knew the answer before Tom even finished reading the question because I read it on Reddit

I've watched too many episodes of Lateral, I got it just from the title.

This was the first question I got instantly 😄

I wonder how many children I have given up by blindly agreeing to random things on the internet.

Omg I immediately had it

So did only six people agree to the terms for that firstborn thing??

I remember hearing about some video game where you would agree to give your soul to Satan if you installed it.

i must have heard is somewhere because it came to me quite fast but i knew the answer after 2min

Oh, so that’s why the corner at Dunsfold’s called the Followthrough! I’d been watching since it started and I always thought it was called that because if you went off there you followed through onto the grass.

Huh, my mind did immediately went to ToS/ToC.

Sean dyche is one smart fella

Wasn't it similarly once found in Apple's T&C that you promised not to use iTunes for nuclear weapons testing or something? That was a long time ago now...

if anything terms and conditions should be clearer, and have something like a summary

Mark Watson has cleaned himself up a bit!

Got it pretty early but im also the nerd who will skim the eula from time to time.

01:15 guess, not reading terms and conditions.

Can someone explain the "follow through" and "clean toilets" connection?

Knew this one instantly. :)

So called clickwrap agreements are really not enforceable in most countries. A checkbox is not a legal signature. There's no witnesses. And a system that allows anybody including children who cannot legally sign a contract to "sign" the agreement would have a really hard time proving that the user "signed" the contract since it could be anyone including a minor who actually clicked through. Most people don't even read all of actual legally binding contracts either since most of them are standard contracts so you know it's nothing unexpected. And if you take a standard contract, add something ridiculous in it and still claim it's a "standard contract" it really doesn't matter if you have a public notary or policeman or whatever witnessing it being legally signed since you lied about it being a standard contract to trick people; the contract will in (at least in all sane countries) not be enforceable. Also in most (sane) countries there are hard limits to what a contract can and cannot do even if both parties are fully informed and consenting; for instance you cannot surrender your human rights in a contract. You cannot agree to a work contract with terms that break the laws about working conditions like minimum rest time, maximum working hours, minimum vacation time etc. You cannot legally force someone with a contract to break a law. I've heard that this might not be true in countries like USA where apparently contracts insanely _can_ supersede laws, and where you actually can agree to surrender your some of your rights.. which is madness; but I'm pretty sure you still cannot legally sell your children just by not noticing a hidden clause in a contract...

lol, I'm about 3 minutes in and haven't read any comments, but I have to assume that this has something to do with the quote-unquote _fine print,_ i.e., the vaunted "terms and conditions" that Kyle Broflovski overlooked (somewhat tragically - for him, at least) in a now-classic "South Park" episode (memorialized in the documentary "6 Days to Air" about the process of creating such a masterpiece).

I don't even have to guess, because I've done this.... = X

About the following through: Do you know the movie "Trainspotters", Adam? 😝

Can someone please explain the "follow-through" toilet idiom?

South Park had an episode about this topic. Season 15, episode 1

We aren’t qualified to read the contracts we sign. At least in the United States, contracts are evaluated legally using precedents that citizens do not have the right to access. Unless you are a lawyer, you do not fully understand the implications of any contract you’ve ever signed. It is objectively abusive to ask someone to sign a contract without the signer having free access to legal advice.

Got it around 4:50.

Little confused why Adam is posed like Superman the whole time, but alright

I incorrectly guessed that you had to name your first child PC Performance Optimize to claim the $1000.

Back when "Dilbert" was still good, there were a few comics about software EULAs with ridiculous clauses, such as "you will submit to strip searches in your home."

Terms of service agreements.

At 2:57 i got it.... EULA.

Immediately, I'm assuming these are terms buried in a EULA that no one reads.

1:50 Shrink wrap licenses are evil. (South Park did this best.)

Finally, something I got immediately and got to be screaming at the screen for 7 minutes.

I'm honestly surprised it took ONLY 4 months. I would've expected it to take years. Cause let's be honest, nobody reads those things...

Be careful agreeing to terms of service. You may be agreeing to something you would never want to agree to.

I remember the guy who won $1000 by reading an app's EULA, but I couldn't remember the name of the app. This is one of those times I immediately knew the answer after the question was read.

I knew it straight away. One of those lateral questions where it feels like the answer is pretty obvious and it makes it seem like the panellists may be actively avoiding getting the answer to not make too short a video, although I'm sure they genuinely play this for real and genuinely didn't get it at first.

I’m surprised Adam didn’t just Google it. Super easy to find the answer that way. Missed opportunity for him the get the answer quickly and avoid all the unnecessary conversations.

Wait so why was it only 6 people that gave up their child ?

Some people lost their souls for the same reason

this proves that people dont read terms and condition so this proves msot people are agreeing to a contact they havent read but lie that they had so is that contract valid?

I have to be honest, Lateral hits different since Tom's break from the main channel

My first guess is video games. People cleaned toilets in World of Warcraft for an achievement.

how do you give your firstborn away, are there islands for that? yes there was but not anymore

freaky

I'm a simple gal, I see "with Tom Scott" I click

1:10 I think I got it 🤔

4:48 eula ?

Initial thoughts: Well, PPO sounds like a straight scam from a random sleazy bloatware. The two others appeal to generosity, sacrifice, hard work, "being good and righteous"... maybe even for a promised substantial payoff/reward afterwards? So, was it a socio-psychological study about people acceptance of such offers, both in credibility/plausibility (scamminess) and willingness to apply? Maybe the first two were about a campaign to help a certain situation. Perhaps in 2013, it could be to help some parts of India embrace indoor plumbed toilets. And in 2014, to help nudge some people to put to term their "unwanted" child for adoption instead of aborting, in order to alleviate infertility.

Something something Human CentiPad

And still, reading ToS is still as obtuse and user-unfriendly as ever (save some glorious exceptions - e.g, ArtStation has a handy "Basically" decalogue that goes around each point and translates it into actual English)

I know its not, but it sounds like it could be a crazy mr beast video Edit: 4:38 yeah I guess I wasn't the only one

I think i know what the answer is and i think it's similar to what Gamestation did :P

They should go to court over it and get the whole idea of EULAs thrown out. Thank you PC Performance Optimize for being so blatant about it. It's the most pro-consumer thing you've ever done.

Aghh, does anyone else get so frustrated when halfway through the question you know exactly what the answer is and you are robbed of the chance to work it out.

So wait… Why aren’t the numbers all the same? Why 22K in community service but “only” 6 giving up their first-born?