By now the often mockingly used acronym FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) should be widely known. It describes the companies that shape and constantly reshape the architecture of a myriad of our basic life functions: They changed how we communicate, how we perceive time, get entertained. In a recent executive order the President of the United States referred to them as "public square" of the 21st century. Imagining our lives without certain mechanisms that they had introduced to us is getting tougher. Many services and functions owned and run by five (plus) businesses from Silicon Valley turn into habits and commodities. The global population hosts their websites with the aid of Amazon, let themselves be educated by documentaries out of the Netflix Studios, replaces address books with Facebook.

While being used to customs and rules of the public square through centuries of belonging and interacting, "being on a platform" is a quite untouched terrain. We don't even know what the catchword platform implies. Are these companies sole infrastructure? Are they publishers? Or advertisers?

What we do know is that they don't remain silent. They communicate in a diverse range of ways from openly addressing societal issues, over telling us what their business actually is, to moderating content. Not least, they do so with their "Terms of Use".

By confronting us with so much information, clauses, phrases, formulations, words, we accept entering relations we have so little knowledge about. One could argue it’s a game of disguise that very much resembles the reading out of the Requerimiento by the Spanish monarchy when taking possession of the New World: Conquistadores would position themselves a mile or so away from the town they’d chose to colonise. The document would be read out in Spanish, a foreign language to the Native population. The whole procedure would take place at night. In the morning settlements would be burned down, the Native's riches taken away. All of that righfully. All of that in the name of God.

Yes - we argue that to some extent we are being colonised by a new breed of masters. 

As a reaction to this, at least felt, colonialism we want to take the various communications of the FAANG companies and invert them. By "switching their canonical order of appearance" (and not only), we make use of figures of speech (again - not only) to critically approximate ourselves towards what they are actually saying.

We turn “Terms of Use” into “Use of Terms”. If we understand what they say, we might anticipate what they want.

DEBUNKING

TURNING TERMS OF USE INTO USE OF TERMS

NETFLIX

APPLE

AMAZON

FACEBOOK

Let's use the search engine's terms.

If you want to use the streaming service's terms, please get in touch.

If you want to use Apple's terms, please get in touch.

If you want to use Apple's terms, please get in touch.

If you want to use terms of the Zuckerberg empire, please get in touch.

DEBUNKING

USE OF TERMS