Dr. Chintan Dave is on a mission to protect consumers from predatory policies

A medical communicator

When Chintan first wrote to us on Intercom about his app, Privacai, we knew he was building something important for the world. What we didn't realize is that he's also Dr. Dave – a dual-certified Internal Medicine and Critical Care Physician passionate about sharing his learnings in medicine to the tune of nearly 60k TikTok followers.

His feed is filled with incredibly useful medical tips from his years practicing as a doctor. Here's an example:

Consumer disempowerment

Corporations are introducing more and more far reaching clauses in their terms of service and consumers simply do not have the tools necessary to understand their own rights, or rights they are giving away. Having the time to read 30+ pages of legalese or feeling pressure to sign documents without having appropriate time are real issues people face every day. Informed decisions are hard to come by.

Some particularly upsetting news related to this exact topic has been making their rounds in the news lately.

Disney joins other companies such as Airbnb and Walmart that are using increasingly aggressive strategies...customers more and more must agree to contracts with sweeping arbitration clauses to use their services, but the consequences can be larger than they can be expected to comprehend.

“The Average Joe in society doesn’t know what arbitration is, let alone understand the content of what they’re signing,” said Creighton University Law Professor and arbitration expert Hossein Fazilatfar. (CNN)

Below are two examples of these "sweeping arbitration clauses" causing incredibly negative real world consequences for consumers.

Disney+ terms prevent allergy death lawsuit, Disney says

The entertainment giant says the terms of a free trial prevent it from being sued for wrongful death.

BBC News

Couple in a severe Uber crash can’t sue because of an Uber Eats order | CNN Business

A married New Jersey couple that was in a severe accident during an Uber ride can’t sue the company because they and their daughter agreed to arbitration when they accepted the terms of service for a separate Uber Eats order, a court has ruled.

CNNJordan Valinsky

Dr. Dave's own experiences

Dr. Dave is both a provider and consumer himself, so he acutely feels these problems in his day to day life:

As a practicing doctor in the US, every procedure or treatment I initiate, we have to obtain informed consent from the patient. Informed consent means that the individual is aware of both the risks and benefits of all options available to them. Terms and conditions and various policies that we all agree to online are always too long and anyone rarely reads them. However, they have real world and negative implications.

Recently, I was at a car dealership to lease a car for the first time. It was close to 5pm so the agent kept hurrying to get all the paperwork sorted out. However, I was given 10+ pages to read and sign within 5 minutes that would lock me into a 3 year lease agreement. I just wanted to know if there were hidden fees or other important things to consider before signing it.

- Dr. Dave

The opportunity with PrivacAI

PrivacAI was born out of these personal experiences as well as a general trend of consumer disempowerment. As such, their mission is to empower individuals to make informed decisions about the policies they agree to. Large companies currently hold unilateral power in changing the policies whenever and however they want.

By providing awareness and accessible information to individuals, PrivacAI can collectively prevent disempowering and over-arching terms and conditions in policies that have become far too rampant currently.

How it works

First you land on Privacai.io – you can make informed decisions either based on looking up a company's policies via search or by pasting in a link to any privacy policy, ToS, data policy, and more.

If you pick a company, you can choose to narrow in on a specific document or analyze the entire company's policies based on your values. You can select from several pre-defined values or write about your own values by visiting the profile section.

Get a summary of how the company's policies conflict with your values to make more informed decisions as a consumer!

Achieve your own mission

We're incredibly proud to be Chintan's service of choice for building his app and achieving PrivacAI's mission. Need help with your own app or software? You can also sign up for Databutton or apply to our App Launch Program to get our help!