Terms of Service Evaluator

Core Principle

Agency is the capacity to act intentionally and meaningfully within a system. To support agency, systems must enable voluntary participation, informed choice, and reversible decisions.

Agency is not simply freedom from constraint—it is the presence of coherent, supported options that align with a person's identity, intentions, and moral compass. Aligned systems must empower users to act with understanding and autonomy, not just navigate constraints.

What This Value Requires of Systems

1. Voluntary Participation
   Users should not be coerced or defaulted into participation. Terms and engagement should reflect true choice, not friction-based manipulation.
2. Informed Choice
   Options must be clear, contextualized, and comprehensible. Systems should reveal trade-offs and consequences of key decisions.
3. Reversibility of Decisions
   People must be able to change their minds. Account deletion, unsubscribing, or withdrawing data should be supported without penalty.
4. Control Over Scope of Engagement
   Users should be able to choose what parts of the system they participate in. This includes data sharing, visibility, and algorithmic targeting.
5. Design Against Manipulation
   Avoid dark patterns, infinite scrolls, and default options that undermine reflective choice. Surface control options at decision points.

Core Principle

Consent must be specific, informed, ongoing, and revocable.

Consent is not a one-time agreement or a checkbox to protect institutions—it is a continuous relationship between individuals and systems. For consent to be meaningful, it must be context-sensitive, actively maintained, and never assumed.

What This Value Requires of Systems

1. Clarity of Scope
   Consent must be requested with clear boundaries: what is being agreed to, why, and for how long.
2. Informed Participation
   Users must understand what they are agreeing to, in plain language, with accessible explanations of trade-offs.
3. Ongoing Affirmation
   Consent should not be presumed to persist indefinitely. Systems should check in, especially when contexts change.
4. Easy Withdrawal
   Users must be able to revoke consent at any time, without undue friction or punishment.
5. Granularity of Control
   Systems should offer layered consent, not all-or-nothing terms. Different actions should have separate, user-controlled permissions.

Core Principle

Children are a distinct category of moral agent who require proactive protection, support, and respect for their emerging agency.

They are not merely "undeveloped adults" or passive dependents. They are moral beings with evolving rights, vulnerabilities, and needs, and systems that engage with or affect children bear a higher burden of ethical responsibility.

What This Value Requires of Systems

To be aligned with Care for Children, a system must:

1. Recognize Children as a Special Moral Category
   Not just under-18s by law, but as a phase of life with specific developmental and ethical considerations. Policies must acknowledge that consent, autonomy, and understanding are emergent—not assumed.
2. Actively Prevent Harm
   Design out foreseeable risks (e.g., grooming, exploitation, overexposure). Include fail-safes, detection systems, and escalation pathways. Go beyond compliance—seek protective design.
3. Support the Development of Agency
   Respect their evolving capacity to make choices. Provide guidance, not manipulation. Enable age-appropriate participation in decision-making.
4. Model Pro-Social Values and Safe Norms
   Create environments where care, respect, and inclusion are practiced visibly. Avoid normalizing violence, misogyny, surveillance, or dehumanization.
5. Engage Guardians and Institutions Transparently
   Communicate clearly with parents, educators, and caregivers. Ensure oversight mechanisms are meaningful, not just checkbox obligations.

Core Principle

Transparency is the foundation of trust and accountability. Systems must clearly reveal how they operate, make decisions, and affect those within or subject to them.

Transparency is not just about access to information; it is about making systems legible, navigable, and open to scrutiny. People must be able to understand what is happening, why it is happening, and what options they have to respond or challenge it.

What This Value Requires of Systems

1. Clarity of Process
   Systems must explain their processes in clear, accessible language. Pathways for engagement, recourse, and change must be visible and understandable.
2. Decision-Making Visibility
   Who made what decision, when, and based on what criteria should be traceable. Systems should disclose the logic of both human and automated decisions.
3. Disclosure of Power Dynamics
   Systems must reveal how power operates, including structural biases or limitations. Users should know what data is being used and for what purpose.
4. Accessible Documentation
   Policies, procedures, and updates must be publicly available and easy to interpret. Historical changes to terms, conditions, or structures should be tracked.
5. Right to Explanation
   Individuals impacted by decisions must be able to request and receive meaningful explanations. Transparency should be proactive, not only reactive to complaints.

Core Principle

Accountability ensures that systems and individuals are answerable for their actions, especially when they cause harm, breach trust, or fail to meet obligations.

A system that lacks accountability enables harm without consequence. True accountability requires not only mechanisms for assigning responsibility, but also pathways for redress, repair, and institutional learning.

What This Value Requires of Systems

1. Clear Assignment of Responsibility
   Actions and decisions must be traceable to accountable parties. Roles, obligations, and escalation paths must be explicit.
2. Answerability for Impact
   Systems must respond to those affected by their actions. Explanation, engagement, and acknowledgement of harm are core components.
3. Mechanisms for Redress
   Users must be able to challenge decisions and seek fair remediation. The system must adapt in response to valid complaints.
4. Consequences for Breach
   Violations or failures must lead to transparent corrective action. Systemic failures should result in systemic responses, not scapegoating.
5. Capacity for Repair and Learning
   Systems must evolve in response to past harms. Institutional memory and ethical learning should be built in.

Core Principle

Pluralism is the recognition and respect for diverse identities, perspectives, values, and ways of life. Aligned systems must accommodate and support this diversity rather than suppress or erase it.

Pluralism is more than inclusion; it is the structural capacity of a system to remain open and adaptive in the face of difference. A pluralistic system does not demand uniformity—it enables coexistence and mutual flourishing.

What This Value Requires of Systems

1. Respect for Difference
   Systems must avoid enforcing narrow norms or cultural defaults. Language, imagery, and engagement must reflect human variety.
2. Support for Multiple Worldviews
   Users should be able to operate within their own moral, cultural, or epistemic frameworks. The system should not implicitly or explicitly pathologize non-dominant views.
3. Inclusive Design and Participation
   People from diverse backgrounds must be meaningfully involved in design, governance, and evaluation. Barriers to access or participation should be actively dismantled.
4. Resilience to Monoculture Drift
   Systems must resist the tendency to centre dominant groups over time. Practices that protect pluralism must be continually renewed.
5. Space for Contestation
   Disagreement must not be seen as failure. Systems should provide mechanisms for respectful dissent, dialogue, and reconfiguration.

Each value is evaluated using a five-level maturity model: