A group of lawyers, professors & judges are about to vote on whether to subject consumers to abusive contracts they don’t negotiate and can’t opt out of. This dangerous proposal will shape decisions in courts across the country – it should be voted down. https://t.co/V6aVf2QYoz

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) May 21, 2019

An ALI spokesman told Engadget in an email that the vote on the project has been pushed back to next year’s annual meeting after the group ran out of time. ALI members, which at Tuesday’s vote included more than 300 practicing lawyers, judges and legal scholars, only approved the project’s definitions.

Penn Record reported that consumer advocate Adam Levitin, who opposes the project, offered an amendment that would make contracts invalid if they were particularly egregious or out of line, or if they fell outside of what “any reasonable consumer would expect”. After a long debate, the amendment was defeated by a vote of 206–144.

But when it came to the substantive meat of the draft, the group was unable to reach a consensus. “We ran out of time before we could complete discussion of the draft. The first motion to approve the Sections of the draft that were discussed was to approve §§ [Sections] 1 and 2. After it was pointed out that the discussion on § [Section] 2 had not been completed, the motion was amended to seek approval of Section 1 only. A motion to defer the motion to approve Section 1 until a subsequent to Annual Meeting was defeated 144–142,” wrote the ALI spokesman. Deepak Gupta, a member of ALI who was present at Tuesday’s meeting, tweeted that there was “vigorous, civil debate”, but none of the project’s substantive sections were approved.

The ALI meeting on the draft Restatement of Consumer Contracts has just ended. There was vigorous, civil debate. None of the substantive sections were approved. The meeting ended with a postponement of the project’s ultimate fate.

— Deepak Gupta (@deepakguptalaw) May 21, 2019

Under the updated terms and conditions, which Facebook confirmed to TechCrunch will apply worldwide, the company is also amending its policy on the limitation of liability. It “now acknowledges its responsibility in case of negligence, for instance in case data has been mishandled by third parties.” Essentially, it’s on the hook for any future Cambridge Analytica-esque data misuse scandals — the European Commission asked Facebook to change some terms in the wake of that affair.

Facebook is also giving up the right to “unilaterally change terms and conditions by limiting it to cases where the changes are reasonable, also taking into account the interest of the consumer.” It will only be able to retain content you’ve deleted under certain circumstances — for instance, up to 90 days for technical reasons, or when authorities make enforcement requests. Additionally, Facebook will have to amend the “language clarifying the right to appeal of users when their content has been removed.”

It agreed these changes with the EU in part to bring its terms in line with the bloc’s consumer rules. The European Commission and Consumer Protection Cooperation Network (a cross-Europe enforcement network of national consumer authorities) will keep a close eye on how Facebook implements these new terms. It will have to make the changes by the end of June. Otherwise, it could face penalties from regulators. Facebook will share more details on the updates as it rolls them out over the next few months.

The EU noted it has also asked Twitter and Google+ to update some of their terms, though the request for the latter to do so is now moot after it closed down this month in the wake of a mass data leak.