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The Global 'Terms of Service' Bloat Index
The Global Terms of Service Bloat Index monitors the median word count growth across the top 100 global digital platforms. By tracking the length of these legal agreements over time, the index quantifies how company policies are expanding.
Data is compiled by scraping the public-facing Terms of Service documents of the sampled services and calculating the percentage increase in total word counts between updates.
This dataset provides a time-series view of 'legal bloat'. As companies add clauses to mitigate liability and navigate new regulations, the documents often become too long for the average user to read, shifting the balance of transparency.