this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024

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577

New Discord TOS binds you to forced arbitration - Opt-Out Now (discord.com)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

93 comments fedilink hide all child comments

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/17618684

Forced arbitration means any legal disputes you may have with Discord must be resolved through a single third party mediator, who 99% of the time is chosen by, and will rule in favor of, the corporation/Discord. This effectively removes all your legal rights as a consumer, because arbitration decisions are legally binding and non-appealable.

The new ToS goes into effect April 15th, 2024.

YOU CAN OPT OUT OF ARBITRATION. You must email [email protected] BEFORE MAY 15TH (30 days after ToS effective date) with your username stating that you wish to opt out of the arbitration clause. Once May 15th passes you are bound to arbitration with Discord forever.

Opt-out before it's too late.

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[–] [email protected] 97 points 8 months ago (5 children)

I hate it’s not a button so much. They’re making opting out as big of a pain in the ass as possible -_-

[–] [email protected] 48 points 8 months ago

imagine if they said that they required a notarized certified letter sent via snail mail

[–] brygphilomena 39 points 8 months ago

Roku made you send a physical letter in their latest change forcing arbitration.

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 8 months ago (3 children)

There's an even easier method, if you do not log in for a year or so, discord deletes your account

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

along with our data? if so thats compelling.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 8 months ago (1 children)

whoa whoa whoa let's not get carried away

[–] taanegl 10 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Think of those poor data brokers... I mean "poor" in the figurative sense..

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

Expecting Discord to delete your data is like expecting a company to burn the money you paid them after you stop doing business with them.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Seriously?

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[–] [email protected] 61 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

Even simpler: don't do Discord.

I was invited to some Discord chatroom once: when I hit the website, the list of blocked scripts in uBlock Origin was longer than my arm. That was all I needed to close the tab immediately. I don't need to run 500 trackers from sketchy advertisement companies to join a glorified IRC chatroom with enough emojis and color to put an epilepsy sufferer in danger.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 8 months ago (6 children)

I'm not really sure what you did, but it certainly wasn't just opening discord.

I just tried it and there isn't a single third party script in the browser version according to Ublock and noscript, there are only three scripts activ in total, all from different Discord subdomains. Maybe a few more if there are media links in the chat.

If you look through the blocked connection requests they are also all made from the same source, namely the Discord science API, their internal data collector.

The Discord homepage has a Google integration and a few embedded YouTube videos, but it's hard to find a website that doesn't have some form of Google scripts.

Heck I don't even want to defend Discord here, but ia call bullshit on your story.

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[–] [email protected] 54 points 8 months ago (1 children)

For anyone who didn’t click into the original post and whose client didn’t include its text, here are the instructions for opting out:

Opt-out. You can decline this agreement to arbitrate by emailing an opt-out notice to [email protected] within 30 days of April 15, 2024 or when you first register your Discord account, whichever is later; otherwise, you shall be bound to arbitrate disputes in accordance with the terms of these paragraphs. If you opt out of these arbitration provisions, Discord also will not be bound by them.

Note that the forced arbitration clause applies only to Discord users in the US. The class action waiver appears to apply regardless.

This is also not a new addition to their TOS, but it does appear to require opting out again even if you already did, and to grant an additional opt out opportunity if you didn’t.

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[–] [email protected] 44 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Thankfully no TOS is legally binding here since pressing agree doesn't count as signing a document.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Do you have anything to prove that? I'm serious, This feels like it shouldn't be binding but I can find no legal reasons or information that it wouldn't be, and I would really like to find that.

Seems ludicrous that a company can be like "OK STARTING IN 30 DAYS NO SUING US ALLOWED. IF YOU DON'T SPECIFICALLY TELL US WITHIN THOSE 30 DAYS THAT YOU MIGHT SOMEDAY NEED TO SUE US THEN YOU NEVER CAN FOREVER." But then a lot of stuff here is ludicrous.

[–] hikaru755 21 points 8 months ago

It depends on where you live. In Germany, forced arbitration in general TOS is invalid and has to be separately negotiated and agreed to. In general, what you can put into your TOS is pretty restricted, anything you put in there that a consumer wouldn't reasonably expect is not gonna be legally binding.

https://law.stackexchange.com/a/82748

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That is the case for all of Europe and most of the rest of the world. That's why that ToS change is only for US customers.

My country only considers electronic signatures made by our national ID cryptographic signature system to be legally binding in contracts. A ToS without that and just an agree button can only be used to set rules within that platform here. In a court a ToS is basically meaningless.

Fun fact: Our online voting system works on the same principle.

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[–] [email protected] 43 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

It has to be noted that this applies to US citizens. For EU citizens the arbitration rules do not apply (that at least is how I read the ToS). Instead, they get an EU body that handles disputes:

If you reside in the European Union, you may also be entitled to submit your complaint to the European Commission’s Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) Platform or the Out-of-Court Dispute Settlement (“OCDS”) mechanism under DSA Article 21.

[–] Aux 32 points 8 months ago (1 children)

European countries don't really have class action suits, issues are usually resolved through all kinds of government agencies and without court involvement. Why bother with court when The Consumer Ombudsman in the UK can fuck any company sideways in a fraction of time and for free?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

European countries don’t really have class action suits

You mean they don't get their $0.55 check in the mail when some lawyer successfully sues a company on their behalf and walks out with $50M?

Gee, that's truly a loss.

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Inb4 people who opt out start finding themselves getting randomly banned for vague, obscure TOS reasons.

[–] thantik 16 points 8 months ago

I'll update if it happens.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago (2 children)

We need a Federated FOSS Discord alternative built to work with the activity pub protocol.

[–] glimse 38 points 8 months ago (2 children)

...Matrix...?

[–] ysjet 28 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Honestly, matrix is incredibly user unfriendly. It needs to stop being held up as an option for these sort of things.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

We don't need a completely decentralized system. Matrix is not efficient, its bloated and overly complicated compared to what you could have. A federated system with minimal overhead would be nice. This is the reason I went with XMPP over matrix for self hosting a discord alternative. I just wish we had something like XMPP that interacted with activitypub.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Matrix isn't decentralized, it is federated just like lemmy or mastodon, except it is its own protocol.

xmpp is still stuck in the early 2000 and even the ecosystem of apps around it are stuck in the 2000.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

revolt.chat?

[–] A_Very_Big_Fan 22 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I was skeptical about all the hate Discord has been getting recently, but this settled it for me

[–] [email protected] 50 points 8 months ago (3 children)

It's ALL companies...be skeptical of every single company out there. None of them have their products, or customers care and safety in mind. You are literally disposable to them all...treat them the exact same way.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago

Like when McDonalds offered free fries or something for everyone who used the app, but then quietly changed the terms of service for the app to include forced arbitration.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Can I ask how this is going to affect other countries outside the US? I do not want to accept something that I do not really know how to handle because it doesn't really apply to my country.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (3 children)

What is forced arbitration and why is it bad?

[–] [email protected] 41 points 8 months ago

If a company does something bad, you can sue to fix it.

Suing sets legal precedent and forces all companies to abide by the ruling, more or less.

But now if a company tricks you out of your right to sue by putting arbitration clauses in everything, then you can't sue. You can only have a (hopefully) impartial third part tell the company to stop doing something specifically to you. The company is still free to keep doing the thing to everyone else, and their arbitration doesn't affect any other companies also doing bad things.

There are other issues too.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/arbitration/what-is-arb.html

Essentially, arbitration waives your right to sue the company in any capacity and instead requires all legal disputes to be resolved by a 3rd party mediator hand picked by the company.
You can guess how often these arbitrators rule against the companies that pay them (Spoiler: it's not often)
It's used as a get-out-of-jail-free card for companies to basically have legal immunity from any kind of consequences, as all their customers must arbitrate and get told to suck eggs. Arbitration is legally binding and not appealable. It also conveniently keeps the corporate dirty laundry out of the court systems, because arbitration is private, confidential and closed-doors.

You can also watch one of Louis Rossmann's latest rants about ToS changes and arbitration being forced down users' throats suddenly without warning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AddtrV6UFFs

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[–] Feathercrown 15 points 8 months ago

‍Opt-out. You can decline this agreement to arbitrate by emailing an opt-out notice to [email protected] within 30 days of April 15, 2024 or when you first register your Discord account, whichever is later; otherwise, you shall be bound to arbitrate disputes in accordance with the terms of these paragraphs. If you opt out of these arbitration provisions, Discord also will not be bound by them.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Um this is not going to hold up in the Ontario Consumer Protection Tribunal due to this: Ontario's Consumer Protection Act, 2002 (“Consumer Protection Act”) prohibits mandatory arbitration clauses and class action waivers in consumer agreements.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (4 children)

The fact that they're even trying thus needs to trigger an exodus.friends don't let friends use discord.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Wait to you read other software TOS. Like it or not, forced arbitration is pretty standard.

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[–] ysjet 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

is it 30 days BEFORE april 15th, or 30 days AFTER april 15th?

[–] ooterness 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

You have until May 15. The announcement just went out today; if they tried to make it retroactive, it wouldn't hold up in court.

Opt-out. You can decline this agreement to arbitrate by emailing an opt-out notice to [email protected] within 30 days of April 15, 2024 or when you first register your Discord account, whichever is later; otherwise, you shall be bound to arbitrate disputes in accordance with the terms of these paragraphs. If you opt out of these arbitration provisions, Discord also will not be bound by them.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

lmao no way in hell this is legally binding

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