“Terms of Service” (S04E02)

PiperChat is gathering attention from investors and a steady stream of daily active users, while Richard keeps working on his “new internet” project. When he asks Dinesh for access to PiperChat’s data repository, Dinesh informs him that he has blocked him out, as well as all former employees, which breaks their verbal agreement. A sympathetic Big Head secretly gives him his login access, and Richard finds out that the main users of PiperChat are children, since the app’s terms of service never included a clause that prevented them from using the app and Dinesh never bothered to port Pied Piper’s terms of service to PiperChat. This violates the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act and can incur in a potential penalty of $21 billion. Meanwhile Jack Barker has an apparent positive reaction to his demotion to the data center underground, but Gavin Belson thinks he is up to something and seeks to spy on his video chat sessions. Since Barker uses PiperChat, the only way to do this is to acquire the company. Accusing him of stealing Hooli Chat’s tech and threatening with a lawsuit, Gavin Belson calls Dinesh to take PiperChat from him, oblivious of its legal problems. Dinesh, who planned to shut down the app all along, happily agrees.