Contributing terms

Tracking new terms

Tracking terms is done by declaring them and the service they are associated with. Such a declaration is achieved by editing JSON files in the declarations folder.

Before adding new terms, open the declarations folder and check if the service you want to track terms for is already declared. If a JSON file with the name of the service is already present, you can jump straight to declaring terms. Otherwise, keep reading!

Declaring a new service

Before declaring a service, you will need to choose the service name and service ID. The service ID will be the name of the JSON file in which the service will be declared. It is a normalised version of the service name.

Service name

The service name is exposed to end users. It should reflect as closely as possible the official service name, as referenced in the terms or “about” pages, so that it can be recognised easily and unambiguously.

  • The service name should be the one used by the service itself, no matter the alphabet, UTF symbols, spaces, and casing.
    • Example: eBay.
    • Example: hi5.
    • Example: LINE.
    • Example: App Store.
    • Example: туту.ру (Cyrillic).
    • Example: 抖音短视频 (Simplified Chinese characters).
  • Domain name extensions (TLDs) are allowed when they are part of the official service name.
    • Example: Booking.com.
    • Example: historielærer.dk.
  • Service names can be prefixed by the provider name, separated by a space, when it would otherwise be too generic or ambiguous.
    • Example: Ads (by Facebook) → Facebook Ads.
    • Example: Analytics (by Google) → Google Analytics.
    • Example: Firebase (by Google) → Firebase.
    • Example: App Store (by Apple) → App Store.

If you have a hard time finding the service name, check out the practical guidelines to find the service name, and feel free to mention your uncertainties in the pull request! We will help you improve the service name if necessary 🙂

Service ID

The service ID is exposed to developers. It should be easy to handle with scripts and other tools.

  • Non-ASCII characters are not supported. Service IDs are derived from the service name by normalising it into ASCII.
    • Example: RTÉRTE.
    • Example: historielærer.dkhistorielaerer.dk.
    • Example: туту.руtutu.ru.
    • Example: 抖音短视频Douyin.
  • Punctuation is supported, except characters that have meaning at filesystem level (:, /, \). These are replaced with a dash (-). The dot (.) is supported, but the service ID cannot be solely . or .. as these have specific meanings in the filesystem.
    • Example: Booking.comBooking.com.
    • Example: Yahoo!Yahoo!.
    • Example: re:startre-start.
    • Example: we://we---.
  • Capitals and spaces are supported. Casing and spacing are expected to reflect the official service name casing and spacing.
    • Example: App StoreApp Store.
    • Example: DeviantArtDeviantArt.

If you have a hard time defining the service ID, check out the practical guidelines to derive the ID from the service name, and feel free to mention your uncertainties in the pull request! We will help you improve the service ID if necessary 🙂

More details on the ID and naming constraints and recommendations can be found in the relevant decision record.

Service declaration

Once you have the service name and the service ID, create a JSON file in the declarations folder named after the ID of the service you want to add, with the following structure:

{
  "name": "<service name>",
  "documents": {}
}

Within the documents JSON object, you will now declare terms.


Declaring terms

Terms are declared in a service declaration file, under the documents property.

Most of the time, terms are written in only one source document (for example Facebook Terms of Service) but sometimes terms can be spread across multiple online source documents, and their combination constitutes the terms (for example Facebook Community Guidelines).

Source document

The way in which a source document is obtained is defined in a JSON object:

{
  "fetch": "The URL where the document can be found",
  "executeClientScripts": "A boolean to execute client-side JavaScript loaded by the document before accessing the content, in case the DOM modifications are needed to access the content; defaults to false (fetch HTML only)",
  "filter": "An array of service specific filter function names",
  "remove": "A CSS selector, a range selector or an array of selectors that target the insignificant parts of the document that has to be removed. Useful to remove parts that are inside the selected parts",
  "select": "A CSS selector, a range selector or an array of selectors that target the meaningful parts of the document, excluding elements such as headers, footers and navigation"
}
  • For HTML files, fetch and select are mandatory.
  • For PDF files, only fetch is mandatory.

Let’s start by defining these keys!

fetch

This property should simply contain the URL at which the terms you want to track can be downloaded. HTML and PDF files are supported.

When terms coexist in different languages and jurisdictions, please refer to the scope of the collection to which you are contributing. This scope is usually defined in the README.

select

This property is not needed for PDF documents.

Most of the time, contractual documents are exposed as web pages, with a header, a footer, navigation menus, possibly ads… We aim at tracking only the significant parts of the document. In order to achieve that, the select property allows to extract only those parts in the process of converting from snapshot to version.

The select value can be either a CSS selector, a range selector or an array of those.

CSS selectors

CSS selectors should be provided as a string. See the specification for how to write CSS selectors.

For example, the following selector will select the content in the <main> tag of the HTML document:

"select": "main"
Range selectors

A range selector is defined with a start and an end CSS selector. It is also necessary to define if the range starts before or after the element targeted by the start CSS selector and to define if it ends before or after the element targeted by the end CSS selector.

To that end, a range selector is a JSON object containing two keys out of the four that are available: startBefore, startAfter, endBefore and endAfter.

{
  "start[Before|After]": "<CSS selector>",
  "end[Before|After]": "<CSS selector>"
}

For example, the following selector will select the content between the element targeted by the CSS selector #privacy-eea, including it, and the element targeted by the CSS selector footer, excluding it:

{
  "startBefore": "#privacy-eea",
  "endBefore": "footer"
}

remove

This property is optional.

Beyond selecting a subset of a web page, some documents will have non-significant parts in the middle of otherwise significant parts. For example, they can have “go to top” links or banner ads. These can be removed by listing CSS selectors, range selectors or an array of them under the remove property.

Example

Let’s assume a web page contains the following content:

<main>
  <div class="filter-holder">
    <select class="filter-options">
        <option value="https://www.example.com/policies/user-agreement" selected>User Agreement</option>
        <option value="https://www.example.com/policies/privacy-policy">Privacy Policy</option>
        <option value="https://www.example.com/policies/content-policy">Content Policy</option>
        <option value="https://www.example.com/policies/broadcasting-content-policy">Broadcasting Content Policy</option>
    </select>
  </div>
  <h1>User Agreement</h1>
  <div>…terms…</div>
</main>

If only main is used in select, the following version will be extracted:

User Agreement Privacy Policy Content Policy Broadcasting Content Policy Moderator Guidelines Transparency Report 2017 Transparency Report 2018 Guidelines for Law Enforcement Transparency Report 2019

User Agreement
==============

…terms…

Whereas we want instead:

User Agreement
==============

…terms…

This result can be obtained with the following declaration:

{
  "fetch": "https://example.com/user-agreement",
  "select": "main",
  "remove": ".filter-holder"
}
Complex selectors examples
{
 "fetch": "https://support.google.com/adsense/answer/48182",
 "select": ".article-container",
 "remove": ".print-button, .go-to-top"
}
{
 "fetch": "https://www.wechat.com/en/service_terms.html",
 "select": "#agreement",
 "remove": {
   "startBefore": "#wechat-terms-of-service-usa-specific-terms-",
   "endBefore": "#wechat-terms-of-service-european-union-specific-terms-"
 }
}
{
 "fetch": "https://fr-fr.facebook.com/legal/terms/plain_text_terms",
 "select": "div[role=main]",
 "remove": [
   {
     "startBefore": "[role=\"separator\"]",
     "endAfter": "body"
   },
   "[style=\"display:none\"]"
 ]
}

executeClientScripts

This property is optional.

In some cases, the content of the document is only loaded (or is modified dynamically) by client scripts. When set to true, this boolean property loads the page in a headless browser to load all assets and execute client scripts before trying to get the document contents.

Since the performance cost of this approach is high, it is set to false by default, relying on the HTML content only.

filter

This property is optional.

Finally, some documents will need more complex filtering beyond simple element selection and removal, for example to remove noise (changes in textual content that are not meaningful to the terms of services). Such filters are declared as JavaScript functions that modify the downloaded web page through the DOM API.

Filters take the document DOM and the terms declaration as parameters and are:

  • in-place: they modify the document structure and content directly;
  • idempotent: they should return the same document structure and content even if run repeatedly on their own result.

Filters are loaded automatically from files named after the service they operate on. For example, filters for the Meetup service, which is declared in declarations/Meetup.json, are loaded from declarations/Meetup.filters.js.

The generic function signature for a filter is:

export [async] function filterName(document, documentDeclaration)

Each filter is exposed as a named function export that takes a document parameter and behaves like the document object in a browser DOM. These functions can be async, but they will still run sequentially. The whole document declaration is passed as second parameter.

The document parameter is actually a JSDOM document instance.

You can learn more about usual noise and ways to handle it in the guidelines.

Example

Let’s assume a service adds a unique clickId parameter in the query string of all link destinations. These parameters change on each page load, leading to recording noise in versions. Since links should still be recorded, it is not appropriate to use remove to remove the links entirely. Instead, a filter will manipulate the links destinations to remove the always-changing parameter. Concretely, the goal is to apply the following filter:

- Read the <a href="https://example.com/example-page?clickId=349A2033B&lang=en">list of our affiliates</a>.
+ Read the <a href="https://example.com/example-page?lang=en">list of our affiliates</a>.

The code below implements this filter:

function removeTrackingIdsQueryParam(document) {
  const QUERY_PARAM_TO_REMOVE = 'clickId';

  document.querySelectorAll('a').forEach(link => {  // iterate over every link in the page
    const url = new URL(link.getAttribute('href'), document.location);  // URL is part of the DOM API, see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/URL
    const params = new URLSearchParams(url.search);  // URLSearchParams is part of the DOM API, see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/URLSearchParams

    params.delete(QUERY_PARAM_TO_REMOVE);  // we use the DOM API instead of RegExp because we can't know in advance in which order parameters will be written
    url.search = params.toString();  // store the query string without the parameter
    link.setAttribute('href', url.toString());  // write the destination URL without the parameter
  });
}
Example usage of declaration parameter

The second parameter can be used to access the defined document URL or selector inside the filter.

Let’s assume a service stores some of its legally-binding terms in images. To track these changes properly, images should be stored as part of the terms. By default, images are not stored since they significantly increase the document size. The filter below will store images inline in the terms, encoded in a data URL. In order to download the images for conversion, the base URL of the web page is needed to resolve relative links. This information is obtained from the declaration.

import fetch from 'isomorphic-fetch';

export async function convertImagesToBase64(document, documentDeclaration) {
  const { fetch: baseUrl, select: selector } = documentDeclaration;
  
  const images = Array.from(document.querySelectorAll(`${selector} img`));

  return Promise.all(images.map(async ({ src }, index) => {
    const imageAbsoluteUrl = new URL(src, baseUrl).href;
    const response = await fetch(imageAbsoluteUrl);
    const mimeType = response.headers.get('content-type');
    const content = await response.arrayBuffer();

    const base64Image = btoa(String.fromCharCode(...new Uint8Array(content)));

    images[index].src = `data:${mimeType};base64,${base64Image}`;
  }));
}

Terms with a single source document

In the case where terms are extracted from one single source document, they are declared by simply declaring that source document:

  
  "documents": {
    "<terms type>": {
      "fetch": "…",
      "executeClientScripts": "…",
      "filter": "…",
      "remove": "…",
      "select": "…"
    }
  }
  

Terms with multiple source documents

When the terms are spread across multiple source documents, they should be declared by declaring their combination:

  
  "documents": {
    "<terms type>": {
        "combine": [
        {
          "fetch": "…",
          "executeClientScripts": "…",
          "filter": "…",
          "remove": "…",
          "select": "…"
        },
        {
          "fetch": "…",
          "executeClientScripts": "…",
          "filter": "…",
          "remove": "…",
          "select": "…"
        }
      ]
    }
  }
  

If some parts of the source documents are repeated, they can be factorised. For example, it is common for the structure of HTML pages to be similar from page to page, so select, remove and filter would be the same. These elements can be shared instead of being duplicated:

  
  "documents": {
    "<terms type>": 
      "executeClientScripts": "…",
      "filter": "…",
      "remove": "…",
      "select": "…",
      "combine": [
        {
          "fetch": "…",
        },
        {
          "fetch": "…",
        }
      ]
  }
  

Terms type

Great, your terms declaration is now almost complete! You simply need to write it under the appropriate terms type in the documents JSON object within the service declaration.

In order to distinguish between the many terms that can be associated with a service and enable cross-services comparison of similar terms, we maintain a unique list of terms types in a dedicated repository.

Please note, the terms type may differ from the exact name provided by the service, but it should align with the underlying commitment. For example, some providers might call “Terms and Conditions” or “Terms of Use” what some others call “Terms of Service”.

If the terms you want to add don’t match an existing type, you can suggest a new one.

Testing your declaration

You can test the declarations you created or changed by running the following command:

npm test [$service_id [$another_service_id …]]

Since this operation fetches documents and could be long, you can also validate the declaration structure only:

npm run test:schema [$service_id [$another_service_id …]]

Linting

In order to ensure consistency across declarations, all declarations files have to be formatted homogeneously.

In order to achieve this, you can use the following command:

npm run lint [$service_id [$another_service_id …]]

Maintaining declarations

All parts of a terms declaration (web location, selection, noise removal, distribution across multiple documents…) can change over time. The process of updating these elements to enable continued tracking is called maintenance. Without it, terms can become:

  • unreachable: no snapshot can be recorded at all, because the location changed or the service denies access;
  • unextractable: no version can be extracted from the snapshot, because the selection of content or some filter fails;
  • noisy: both snapshots and versions are recorded but the changes contain noise that should have been filtered out.

Open Terms Archive needs to keep track of this changes in order to regenerate versions history from snapshots history.

Service history

To keep track of services declarations and filters changes, Open Terms Archive offers a versioning system. It is optional and should be added only when needed. It works by creating history files for terms declarations and filters, where each entry should be a previous valid declaration or filter function and should have an expiry date.

Both for terms and filters history, the expiration date is declared in a property validUntil. It should be the authored date and time of the last snapshot commit for which the declaration is still valid.

Terms declarations history files and filters history files can both evolve on their own. Having one does not imply to create the other.

The current (latest) valid declaration has no date and should not appear in the history object: it stays in its own file, just like if there was no history at all.

Terms declaration history

Declarations history are stored in a history JSON file with the following name declarations/$service_id.history.json.

The terms history contains an object with terms types as properties. Each terms type property is an array of history entries. Each entry has the same format as a normal terms declaration, except there is the mandatory extra property validUntil.

{
  
  "<terms type>": [
    {
      "fetch": "The URL where the document can be found",
      "executeClientScripts": "A boolean to execute client-side JavaScript loaded by the document before accessing the content, in case the DOM modifications are needed to access the content; defaults to false (fetch HTML only)",
      "filter": "An array of service specific filter function names",
      "remove": "A CSS selector, a range selector or an array of selectors that target the insignificant parts of the document that has to be removed. Useful to remove parts that are inside the selected parts",
      "select": "A CSS selector, a range selector or an array of selectors that target the meaningful parts of the document, excluding elements such as headers, footers and navigation",
      "validUntil": "The inclusive expiration date in ISO format"
    }
  ]
  
}

For example, to add a history entry for the Terms of Service of the service ASKfm, create the file declarations/ASKfm.history.json with the following contents:

{
  "Terms of Service": [
    {
      "fetch": "https://ask.fm/docs/terms_of_use/?lang=en",
      "select": "body",
      "filter": ["add"],
      "validUntil": "2020-10-29T21:30:00.000Z"
    }
  ]
}

Filters history

Filters history is declared in a filters history declaration JavaScript file with the following name: declarations/$service_id.filters.history.js.

For each filter, a variable named like the filter must be exported. This variable should contain an array of filter history entries. Each entry is an object with the expiration date, as validUntil property, and the valid function for this date, under the filter property. Both properties are mandatory.

export const <filterName> = [
  {
    validUntil: "The inclusive expiration date in ISO format",
    filter: function() { /* body valid until the expiration of the `validUntil` date */ }
  }
];

For example, to add a history entry for the removeSharesButton filter of the service ASKfm, create the file declarations/ASKfm.filters.history.js with the following content:

export const removeSharesButton = [
  {
    validUntil: '2020-08-22T11:30:21.000Z',
    filter: async (document) => {
      document.querySelectorAll('.shares').forEach((element) => element.remove());
    },
  },
];

Handling a terminated service

If the service provider stops offering a service, the associated terms will become unavailable. To mark that service termination in Open Terms Archive and ensure tracking tentatives are stopped, while maintaining the possibility to explore the history:

  1. Move the existing documents declaration to the service history file.
  2. Update the declaration to stop tracking all terms, by removing every <terms type> entries from the documents key in the declaration:
{
  "name": "<service name>",
  "documents": {}
}

Renaming a service

The consensus is to consider that a service provider renaming a service (for example, Twitter to X) is akin to terminating the previous service and opening a new one. Therefore, to apply a service renaming, open a pull request that both terminates the previous service and adds a new service declaration with the new service name. You can reuse the documents part of the original declaration, but should double-check that the selectors and URLs still match, as a service rename is most often accompanied by a new page layout, a new domain name, and sometimes entirely new terms.