I figured maybe you give Prezi the rights to your content, but in fact, no. They can only republish your content on their account if you tag it as "public":

Customer hereby grants to Prezi a world-wide, non-exclusive, revocable, royalty-free, fully paid, sublicensable and transferable license for the Term of this Agreement to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works, communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display, distribute and transmit the Customer Content: (i) for the purpose of providing the Presentation Services to Customer and (ii) to the extent Customer has designated any portion of the Customer Content as “Public Content” through the content management features of the Presentation Services, for Prezi to make use of such “Public Content” in connection with promotion and marketing of Prezi’s products and services. Customer also hereby grants to Prezi a world-wide, non-exclusive, perpetual, royalty-free, fully paid, sublicensable and transferable license to (a) analyze the Customer Content for the purposes of quality control, benchmarking and improving the Presentation Services and (b) maintain a back-up copy of Customer’s “Public Content” indefinitely. Customer represents and warrants that it has all rights, clearances and authority necessary to grant the foregoing licenses to Prezi. Customer reserves all rights to the Customer Content that are not expressly granted in this Agreement.

In literacy tests, under 2% of Americans read beyond a grade 12 level. Odds are than under 1% could read that terms of use and actually understand it. Even if they wanted to.

(Note, they only analyze the first 3000 words.)

TEXT READABILITY CONSENSUS CALCULATOR www.ReadabilityFormulas.com

Timestamp: 11/02/2020 — 12:19:15pm

Purpose: Our Text Readability Consensus Calculator uses 7 popular readability formulas to calculate the average grade level, reading age, and text difficulty of your sample text.

Your Results:

Your text: These Prezi Business Terms and Conditions, togethe ... (2920 words total)

1. Flesch Reading Ease score: 29 (text scale) Flesch Reading Ease scored your text: very difficult to read.

2. Gunning Fog: 17 (text scale) Gunning Fog scored your text: difficult to read.

3. Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level: 15 Grade level: College.

4. The Coleman-Liau Index: 13 Grade level: college

5. The SMOG Index: 14 Grade level: college

6. Automated Readability Index: 15 Grade level: College graduate

7. Linsear Write Formula: 18 Grade level: College Graduate and above.

---------------------------------------------- READABILITY CONSENSUS ---------------------------------------------- Based on (7) readability formulas, we have scored your text:

Grade Level: 15 Reading Level: very difficult to read. Age of Reader: College graduate ----------------------------------------------

I find this hard to believe, given that 34% of Americans have a college degree.

That's roughly "college level reading" on official measures.

And yes, comparing high school graduation rates with adult literacy it is obvious that a lot of people graduated high school with skills below what they were supposed to have. I find this depressing but in accord with my experience.

You might have misread that. It says 2% of global adults (“across all countries”) are level 5. It also says that level 5 does not officially exist, and level 4 is the highest level on the PIAAC scale.

According to that article, 12% of Americans are in the highest level measured. Over 13% of Americans have post-graduate degrees. And while on the scale you linked to, the U.S. ranks lower than a lot of countries, don’t ignore the fact that the spread of absolute scores above the U.S. is in the single digit percentages. Framing these particular scores as representing some kind of glaring education problem here seems to be over-emphasizing minor global differences and ignoring some context.

I hope this gives you reasons to feel more optimistic. We have plenty of room to improve, but it is clearly not as bad as you thought.

If you go to https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014008.pdf for a more detailed look at the data, you'll find that the fraction of adults world-wide who score at level 4/5 is the same as the USA. In age breakdowns, more US 55-65 year olds are at that top literacy bracket, and in every other age cohort is worse.

Therefore there is no reason to believe that the US at the level 5 is any different than the global average. And there is reason to suspect that the USA is getting worse over time.

Incidentally I was merely stating it as data and didn't blame this on a glaring education problem here. That would be a much longer discussion.

It is clear that the earlier claim "under 2% of Americans read beyond a grade 12 level" is not true, and not what your supporting links actually say. It's absolutely clear that your speculation "Odds are than under 1% could read that [Prezi's] terms of use and actually understand it." is both not true and dramatically pessimistic.

Yes, legalese is dense. Hardly anyone reads it because it takes a lot of time, not because nobody is capable. How many people read below a 12th grade level (whatever that means) are using Prezi in the first place?

I'm just pointing out that your initial interpretation of the data was off by an order of magnitude.

There absolutely is a level 5. It was defined and measured in the survey. Both links confirm that.

But then they did not break it down in the reporting because few enough people fell into it for their survey to produce reasonable statistics on a per country level.

Now you are correct that I should not have said "under 2%". But given that the portion of the USA at level 4/5 matches the international portion at the same level (both cases 12%), it seems likely that the portion of the USA at level 5 (which the survey was not large enough to estimate) is about the same as the international average (which the survey measured at 2%).

Therefore even though the survey did not report a figure for the USA, it is likely that the real figure is around 2%.

I stand by my belief that this terms of service is sufficiently complex that even fewer can understand it.

You are right that the average Prezi user is more likely to be literate than the average American.

This figure is meaningless, which is part of why they didn’t report it. You’re fixating on a number that doesn’t inform you.

Whatever their level 5 means, it excludes at least 90% of the people who wrote large technical and impenetrable documents just to graduate from school, not including all the practicing lawyers, doctors, engineers, scientists, and writers in the country.

There’s a disconnect between using the 2% number to represent any kind of literacy threshold, and reality. It may have measured something, but this “2%” does not represent a limit on number of people who have the capability to read Prezi’s terms of service.

> I stand by my belief that this terms of service is sufficiently complex that even fewer [than 2%] can understand it.

That’s unfortunate, I’ve failed to make a convincing argument. I was hoping to help you see more clearly that’s not what your data actually says, and is also contradicted by other data as well. The data isn’t wrong, but your interpretation is.

Plus it's a poor use of half an hour if they can change things anyway:

> Prezi may revise these Prezi Business Terms and Conditions. If Prezi makes material revisions, Prezi will notify Customer, either through the user interface of the Presentation Services, in an email notification or through other reasonable means. Customer’s use of the Presentation Services after the date such revisions become effective will constitute consent to the revised Prezi Business Terms and Conditions.

I know it doesn't exactly say that...but it doesn't clearly say anything else either, and presumably some actual body of laws has to apply no matter how California's laws evolve; I'm honestly curious what the actual intended result of this provision is.

> In the event your paid Prezi account reverts to a free Prezi Public account, any content you previously created with a paid Prezi account and designated as Private User Content will remain Private User Content, but you will not be able to edit such content. New content you create with such an account will become Public User Content, which means any new content you create from that point forward is going to be public.

(emphasis mine)