We absolutely support plain language. To some extent in the industry there is already a move towards it. There have been a few companies so far that have published their plain-language terms of service. Essentially the language is along the lines of saying “We're going to share your information with third-party companies. Are you okay with that?”—using simple statements, simple language that people can read and understand very quickly. The companies that are doing this are getting a lot of praise from those around them. There's a lot of push to actually do this.
Beyond that, within the market research space we pride ourselves with the “do no harm” phrase. We know that a lot of people don't read those, don't understand them, and we take it upon ourselves to be a sort of overseer. We respect that not everybody knows or understands. We will look out for you on your behalf. When we see that something should be done in a certain way, even if it's technically legal, if we don't think it meets our higher ethical standards, then we'll make sure to do what we know is the right thing, even though it goes beyond checking the box that nobody has read.
One final point is that observational research, which is essentially what social media research is all about—looking at what people are saying, looking at what they're doing—has a long-standing tradition as a legitimate research method. Sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists have been doing this for more than a hundred years. It's a standard practice. It's becoming more and more popular now with social media—it's easier to do it and you can observe a lot more people doing it—but we still take pride in ensuring that what we do is following the “do no harm” methodology.