The State of Governance

How 352 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.

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

The big picture

What the terms bind you to

206 / 352
platforms have a binding-arbitration clause
59% of tracked platforms
288 / 352
platforms have a data-sharing/sale clause
82% of tracked platforms
257 / 352
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 352 tracked.

Contract Terms 297 · 84%
Data Collection 296 · 84%
Privacy Rights 290 · 82%
Unilateral policy changes 289 · 82%
Data sharing or sale 288 · 82%
Liability limitations 287 · 82%
Acceptable Use 282 · 80%
Rights to use your data 279 · 79%
Enforcement / suspension 277 · 79%
Data retention & deletion 275 · 78%
Disclosure Requirements 273 · 78%
Legal Jurisdiction 267 · 76%
Unilateral account control 265 · 75%
Platform Discretion 263 · 75%
License to your content 257 · 73%
Restricted Content 245 · 70%
Other 241 · 68%
Payment Fees 231 · 66%
Indemnification 229 · 65%
AI / automated decisions 217 · 62%
Binding arbitration 206 · 59%
Export Sanctions 183 · 52%
Refunds 179 · 51%
Targeting Restrictions 148 · 42%
Content Moderation 142 · 40%
Monetization Rules 125 · 36%
Developer Api 109 · 31%
Commission Payout 35 · 10%
Landing Page 8 · 2%
Consent 5 · 1%
Change activity

Governance changes detected per month

History starts 2026-02. The current month is in progress (shown hatched).

1
Feb ’26
128
Mar ’26
347
Apr ’26
789
May ’26
810
Jun ’26
676
Jul ’26
84
Aug ’26
Read this as a baseline, not a trend. The rise from 2026-02 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.