The State of Governance

How 343 platforms actually govern you.

A reproducible measurement of the terms you agree to — arbitration, data use, content licensing, and how often the rules change — read directly from the public archive. Every figure below counts distinct platforms, shows its confidence where coverage is thin, and can be reproduced from the same free evidence. No estimates.

343 platforms tracked · counts are distinct entities, not provisions · how it's measured →

The big picture

What the terms bind you to

197 / 343
platforms have a binding-arbitration clause
57% of tracked platforms
281 / 343
platforms have a data-sharing/sale clause
82% of tracked platforms
250 / 343
platforms claim a license to your content
73% of tracked platforms

Sharper, where we've normalized the underlying stance (and only counted platforms whose stance is actually stated — never inferred from silence): of the 150 platforms with a normalized arbitration stance, 114 impose forced arbitration and 133 waive your right to a class action; of the 52 with a normalized data-use stance, 39 train AI models on your content.

Clause prevalence

How common each clause is

Distinct platforms carrying at least one active provision of each type, out of 343 tracked.

Contract Terms 290 · 85%
Data Collection 286 · 83%
Unilateral policy changes 285 · 83%
Liability limitations 281 · 82%
Data sharing or sale 281 · 82%
Privacy Rights 277 · 81%
Acceptable Use 273 · 80%
Rights to use your data 273 · 80%
Enforcement / suspension 270 · 79%
Data retention & deletion 268 · 78%
Disclosure Requirements 267 · 78%
Legal Jurisdiction 264 · 77%
Unilateral account control 258 · 75%
License to your content 250 · 73%
Platform Discretion 250 · 73%
Restricted Content 238 · 69%
Other 227 · 66%
Indemnification 225 · 66%
Payment Fees 220 · 64%
AI / automated decisions 211 · 62%
Binding arbitration 197 · 57%
Export Sanctions 179 · 52%
Refunds 173 · 50%
Targeting Restrictions 141 · 41%
Content Moderation 139 · 41%
Monetization Rules 116 · 34%
Developer Api 103 · 30%
Commission Payout 31 · 9%
Landing Page 8 · 2%
Change activity

Governance changes detected per month

History starts 2026-03. The current month is in progress (shown hatched).

10
Mar ’26
23
Apr ’26
60
May ’26
58
Jun ’26
69
Jul ’26
60
Aug ’26
75
Sep ’26
66
Oct ’26
Read this as a baseline, not a trend. The rise from 2026-03 onward largely reflects platforms being onboarded into monitoring, not governance activity actually accelerating. Treat it as a baseline that becomes a true trend as coverage stabilizes.
User-Protection Index

Most and least user-protective

Ranked among the 43 platforms scored on 5–6 of 6 governance dimensions — enough coverage to rank fairly. Each row shows its coverage. A further 148 platforms are scored on only 3–4 dimensions (provisional) and are deliberately not ranked here, so a thin read never outranks a complete one.

Most protective
1 Smartsheet 74.3 5/6
2 Sourcegraph Cody 68.5 5/6
3 Loom 58.8 5/6
4 Peloton 51.2 5/6
5 Fireworks AI 48.8 5/6
6 Harvey AI 48.3 6/6
7 Vercel AI 47.8 5/6
8 LangChain 46.4 5/6
Least protective
1 Redfin 8.9 5/6
2 Uniswap 11.0 5/6
3 Runway 12.6 5/6
4 ZipRecruiter 12.9 5/6
5 Uber 14.5 5/6
6 Hilton 18.3 5/6
7 Windsurf 18.8 5/6
8 Perplexity AI 20.8 5/6

Across all 191 scored platforms: average 31.4/100 · median 30.8 · quartiles 18.4 / 42.3. Higher = more protective of you, the user.

Methodology & verification

Anyone can reproduce this

Every number on this page is counted from the same public archive you can browse for free — no proprietary panel, no survey, no estimate. Prevalence and headline figures count distinct platforms (a platform with ten arbitration provisions counts once). The User-Protection Index is deterministic: the same cited governance stances always produce the same score, and no dimension we haven't confidently read is ever counted. Where coverage is thin, we say so and hold it back rather than guess.