Discord hasn't yet obtained approval for their contract from the American Arbitration Association. They're not on the list.[1] Until a company gets on that list, which has a fee, the AAA will refuse to run arbitrations involving contracts specifying AAA arbitration. The AAA does this to prevent companies from adding additional unfavorable terms to arbitration agreements.
At least Discord specified AAA arbitration. They're considered legitimate. There are arbitration services that are much worse. One is a front for a debt collection company.
Seems they can register at the last minute:
>If a business has not registered its consumer clause prior to the filing of a consumer case, the AAA will require that the business registers its clause at that time. I
Animats 4 days ago [-]
Right. Not being on that list, though, indicates that nobody actually went to arbitration rather than going to small claims court. Small claims court is always an option with AAA arbitration. Either party can take that route.
chatmasta 4 days ago [-]
I’m sure Discord spends more money on lawyers than I do, so I’ll take any edge I can get.
jhgg 4 days ago [-]
FYI, the forced arbitration clause has existed in the ToS since 2018. This is not new.
It is new again, actually - if you opted out previously, you have to opt out again to stay opted out, according to the wording of the new terms. One opt out per Discord account, if you have multiple, in each case within 30 days of registering that account or of April 15, 2024, whichever is later. This provision does not make reference to the first time you accepted a version of these terms with an arbitration clause, or a similar phrase that would obviate the need for a new opt-out.
On the plus side, if you didn’t opt out before, you get a new opportunity to opt out, which according to the new terms will remove all disputes that have not yet been filed from the scope of previous arbitration agreements with Discord.
Since the clause only applies if you are a US resident, it’s very unclear how that opt-out deadline applies to existing Discord accounts for people who relocate into the US after the deadline. The conservative approach is to opt out wherever in the world you live, in case you later move to the US.
malka 4 days ago [-]
Thanks for the info. Just in case, I setup a script to send a daily mail to arbitration-opt-out@discord.com
jkaplowitz 4 days ago [-]
Risky … if it’s automated, they could argue that you’re not actually making a conscious decision and/or not actually doing it yourself, claiming that it doesn’t apply or isn’t an unambiguous indication of your intent to knowingly opt out of whatever the next revision of the arbitration clause may be. It’s far more unclear how that would play out in (US) court than with a manual opt-out once per account per terms of service revision.
a_random_canuck 4 days ago [-]
A funny argument to make when the “contract” is entirely automated, without negotiation or consideration.
Such agreements should not be enforceable in the first place.
jkaplowitz 4 days ago [-]
I agree that there should be more restrictions on this than there currently are in the US, but unless the composition of the US Supreme Court changes enough that they overrule their many recent arbitration-related precedents, we’re stuck with this unless and until Congress changes the law. Honestly, they’re not even legally required to allow an opt-out at all under current rulings, other than rejecting the terms of service entirely.
At least no constitutional amendment is required to fix this. These US Supreme Court rulings have been based on the Federal Arbitration Act, a regular statue, not on the Constitution (except as the source of Congress’s authority to override state law on this issue).
malka 4 days ago [-]
Your are right. I actually should add a new script for a daily mail every time there is any update to the tos page.
This feels like a giant waste of energy that could be put into better causes. The number of people who are eligible to opt out now (those who already opted out in previous iterations) is microscopic compared to Discord's wider user base, and I would be absolutely shocked if a single person involved in this actually ends up suing Discord either individually or as part of a class.
Whether or not you believe forced arbitration is bad, it seems like there have to be higher value causes to get up in arms about right now.
john-radio 4 days ago [-]
> Whether or not you believe forced arbitration is bad, it seems like there have to be higher value causes to get up in arms about right now.
Yes indeed, but resistance against unfairness is not like a coin purse; it is like a muscle. When exercised, it seems like it increases its capacity.
lolinder 4 days ago [-]
My sense looking at the last few years is that resistance is more like a habit than a muscle. It's not that your capability to resist gets stronger each time, it's that it becomes a reflex.
The upside to having the reflex is that you stand up against unfairness more often. The downside is that it becomes a simple response to a stimulus rather than a conscious choice, which means you end up constantly caught up in the cause du jour without ever stopping to think about whether this particular case warrants your limited time or even whether it's actually a case of true unfairness.
misswaterfairy 4 days ago [-]
If you're looking for an open-source, self-hostable, end-to-end encrypted Discord alternative, check out Spacebar.
Supported by Democrats, killed by Republicans. Elections matter.
willcipriano 4 days ago [-]
If the justice system prevents access to itself like this, can it really call itself a justice system anymore?
MiguelX413 4 days ago [-]
I've always thought that it should be called “(the) legal system”, not “(the) justice system”.
FMecha 4 days ago [-]
At this point I believe the only solution is a constitutional amendment, not a mere legislation, given that pro-arbitration laws/cases have been ruled as constitutional.
xp84 3 days ago [-]
Not a lawyer, but I don’t think that’s true. There isn’t anything in the Constitution about arbitration. Congress passed an arbitration law and nothing in it prevents all this. When cases go to court, the constitution is the only thing that could override the law, but if the law gets better, more specific, adds more protections, SCOTUS must respect that, again unless the Constitution somehow applied.
A lot of SCOTUS opinions in general seem pretty clear that they wish Congress would act and spell out what they want to happen, because that sure as hell is better than running to the courts to decide everything.
bigstrat2003 4 days ago [-]
This is what we need, yeah. I don't have a problem with binding arbitration if parties with equal leverage agree to it, but it should be flat out illegal to require it as terms of employment or part of ToS.
hakfoo 4 days ago [-]
Modern civil law seems to revolve around this quaint fiction of contracts being some sort of "meeting of the minds" of relatively equally resourced parties.
This might have been viable in 1795, but it feels ill suited to a world where we have billion dollar firms, legal staff on retainer, and contracts that have been revised like a codebase... versus consumers with no formal legal training.
Even if there wasn't an inherent inequality of field, the high cost of litigation also encourages a tendency to ask for the unreasonable. The people presenting the contract know there's probably not enough money in it for anyone but the wealthy and begrudged to try to challenge the contract, so there's little risk to asking for more permissions, less liability, and tighter binding on the consumer. In the worst case, the cost serves as an effective bludgeon for abusive behaviour: they'll go along because they can't afford to get a favourable judgement.
I dream of a world where there's no surprises in contracts-- basically there'd be a book of standard contracts filled out in a Mad Lib fashion. This would collapse a lot of the possibilities courts would have to deal with, resulting in a faster, predictable, almost deterministic legal system. If someone actually wanted to bring out a new clause, it would have to go through a highly-visible, paperwork-intensive vetting and discussion process. The Discords of the world then have to face very public scrutiny of their actions and motives: what makes your needs so special that they can't be dealt with using the standard contract for data services?
koolba 4 days ago [-]
> … or part of ToS.
Let’s forget employment for a sec and just look at a product’s terms. Why can’t you just not use the product?
“It’s popular” is hardly an excuse for something new if you’re picking the platform.
If it’s an existing community and you feel forced to join a closed system with too many rules for your tastes, skip it. The community will suffer and hopefully they change to something you’ll like. But if not, screw em.
teeray 4 days ago [-]
Voting with your feet only works if your feet have somewhere else to go. Binding arbitration is a cancer that is everywhere and spreading. Your due diligence to choose products that have no binding arbitration are futile, because they can change the game any time. You can opt out, but then they play the arbitration do-over card like Discord is doing here and nullify that unless you opt out again. You can’t win.
foota 4 days ago [-]
Avoiding a large part of society isn't a practical response.
Besides, many may not know of the forced arbitration, despite it negatively impacting them. People are famously bad at these coordination problems.
koolba 4 days ago [-]
> Avoiding a large part of society isn't a practical response.
In my personal experience, it’s worked out fine.
> Besides, many may not know of the forced arbitration, despite it negatively impacting them. People are famously bad at these coordination problems.
Not reading the thing you’re agreeing to is not an excuse. Otherwise it’d be an out for any contract.
And again, consumers can vote with their feet by only agreeing to terms that are understandable.
noodlesUK 4 days ago [-]
Countries regularly legislate and regulate against various forms of unfair terms in contracts, ranging from the deceptive and absurd to fairly mundane things. You can’t enter into contracts requiring illegal behaviour for instance. This is true in the U.S. and all other countries that I’m aware of.
In the UK and other European countries, particularly regarding consumer goods or other kinds of contracts with an inherent asymmetry of negotiating power, there are lots of things you can’t agree in contracts, such as disclaiming general fitness for purpose and safety.
Deciding that you can’t agree away your rights to redress through the judicial system seems like a reasonable extension of these kinds of rules.
handoflixue 4 days ago [-]
> In my personal experience, it’s worked out fine.
Okay, but you do realize other people have a different experience of the world, right?
Discord is super-easy to avoid right up until it turns out the only communities for something are on Discord. Or your teacher assigns you work that requires using it. Or your work requires you to use it. Or...
And the thing is, 99% of us will never run into any of those situations! It's easy not to be affected personally, right up until you are
> Not reading the thing you’re agreeing to is not an excuse.
Okay, but I did read the entire TOS at the time - now I'm required to also read every update and respond within a 30 day period. Which, again, easy not to be personally affected right up until you're on vacation in a region with bad internet, or just super-busy with work and you miss that one email
> And again, consumers can vote with their feet by only agreeing to terms that are understandable.
We ban all sorts of contracts - you can't sell yourself into slavery, you can't agree to commit a crime. So what's wrong with voting with our actual vote, instead?
Especially since I'm interested in protecting not just myself, but other people who might not realize how much this potentially disadvantages them.
Akronymus 4 days ago [-]
I know a few students who are required to use discord due to the teacher distributing courae work over it.
foresto 4 days ago [-]
It makes me sad to learn that someone's education is locked behind Discord's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.
ronsor 4 days ago [-]
Wait until you learn how much education is locked behind Google's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, or Microsoft's...
foresto 2 days ago [-]
Are you trying to make me cry?
8note 4 days ago [-]
Discord is the sole distributor for products that they do not themselves, the conversations done by third parties.
If chat required interoperability like telephones do, this would not be an issue. The government has failed at making proper regulations
xyst 4 days ago [-]
Given the state of SCOTUS, doubtful.
tzs 4 days ago [-]
Isn't it the Federal Arbitration Act from 1926 that is largely responsible for the current state of forced arbitration in the US? If Congress wants to remove that I don't see how the Supreme Court would be able to find a way to say that they cannot.
lostdog 4 days ago [-]
The Supreme Court reinvented the FAA under Roberts, giving it more power than was ever intended. True that Congress could override their interpretation, but people blame the Supreme Court because they created the mess in the first place.
appplication 4 days ago [-]
As a consumer, I’m not sure I understand the disdain for forced arbitration. I understand discord desires it because it helps prevent rulings becoming case law.
But I am going through forced arbitration right now in a personal lawsuit, and part of it is bleeding to a third party that does not arbitrate, which means real court. By all accounts I have been assured by my lawyer we are in a better position pursuing arbitration over litigation. Both seem to be quite expensive options, though fortunately there is a clause for legal fees to the prevailing side (and in my case evidence in my favor is airtight).
Any enlightenment would be wonderful.
ncallaway 4 days ago [-]
Forced arbitration reduced your options. You can agree to arbitration if both parties desire it when a dispute arises.
One of the biggest consumer protections that a forced arbitration clause can kill is a class action lawsuit. If a corporation harms each consumer for $.30, there’s no real way to bring an individualized case over that. A class action is a viable option to hold the corporation to account.
appplication 4 days ago [-]
That makes sense, thanks for the context. Though, I’ve been a part of maybe 10 class actions in my life so far, and all of them amounted to less than $50 each. I suppose they are more effectively punitive to the corp than compensatory to the aggrieved.
ncallaway 4 days ago [-]
> I suppose they are more effectively punitive to the corp than compensatory to the aggrieved.
Generally yes. One of the whole points of a class action is that they can address harms that are de minimis to an individual, but pretty bad for a society as a whole when repeated millions of times. So, generally the harm to you was small (probably small enough that you didn’t notice, or wouldn’t have bothered fighting the corporation on your own over it), so the compensation to you is also generally small.
As a class member, you can opt out of the class, and sue the company individually, if you think you’ve been significantly damaged more tban a typical member of the class. There’s usually a proactive step you have to opt out at some point.
emacsen 4 days ago [-]
As someone who has also been in an arbitration (though not forced), and had a generally decent outcome, I still understand why consumers dislike these policies.
Court is an essential part of government function that allows two parties to be judged fairly in a dispute. It's the great equalizer- at least in theory.
While the act of going to court with a lawyer is expensive, court itself is not expensive.
Moreover, court cases can be used as precedent for other court cases. Evidence found in one case can be used in another.
Arbitration works very differently.
Firstly, an arbitration clause may allow for the party with more "clout" to specify a less fair arbitration body. While the matter of arbitration fairness is complex, it's certainly not wild speculation that some bodies side more with some kinds of entities than others.
Secondly, arbitration requires up front payment. This can actually be a good thing for consumers in that it forces both parties to pay, but it costs a lot of money- thousands of dollars. Most people aren't going to spend that kind of money.
Thirdly, arbitration is not court, and findings in arbitration can't be used either in court, or in future arbitration cases. This provides an advantage to the big company, since they know what they might face, but each time a consumer goes after them, they're starting essentially from scratch!
Lastly, it precludes collective action. Each Discord user who feels wronged may not have the resources to arbitrate on their own, which is why the courts allow for class action lawsuits. Forced arbitration takes that option away.
Companies mostly want it because it's a lot cheaper to do discovery in an arbitration, actually. Some kind of unfavorable precedent is extreme tail risk because no matter what you're almost certainly going to settle, that isn't really a factor in legal department decisions. But real civil discovery is an extremely lengthy and expensive process.
olliej 4 days ago [-]
No they want it because it stops class action lawsuits, arbitration is notorious for being biased in favor of the companies that pay them, and it removes your access to a jury trial (eg one where the judge is not being paid by your opponent).
The claim businesses make is that it is more efficient than court for people, but if that were actually the case then they would not need to constantly try to add forced arbitration.
Forced arbitration is only a win for the business, and the entire intent is to make it so that the amount of harm they have to do before it is worth anyone suing them has to be measured in thousands of dollars for any person. The only way corporations are held to account for the majority of their crime is through increasingly impossible class action lawsuits.
fuomag9 4 days ago [-]
Me in the EU: and nothing of value was lost (since I literally can’t lose my right to sue them)
When is the USA going to realise that allowing companies to behave like this shouldn’t be allowed?
nozzlegear 4 days ago [-]
Many of us have realized that. It's just a matter of getting it through Congress. As someone upthread noted, bills similar to your EU protections have been introduced in each new Congress in recent years, but they have yet to make it to a President's desk.
xyst 4 days ago [-]
> When is the USA going to realise that allowing companies to behave like this shouldn’t be allowed?
When this country stops fighting amongst itself over {race | skin color | wealth status | consumerism | brand loyalty | political affiliation} and aim our collective anger at companies, lobbyists, oil and gas, billionaires, and 0.01%. AKA the true people that end up writing our laws.
bugglebeetle 4 days ago [-]
> When this country stops fighting amongst itself over wealth status
> and aim our collective anger at companies, lobbyists, oil and gas, billionaires
A deeply confused argument.
ronsor 4 days ago [-]
It's not that confused. A fast food employee has more in common with a random tech worker than the latter does with someone like Elon Musk.
What the commenter meant is almost certainly "stop infighting in the lower and middle classes".
4 days ago [-]
AdrianB1 4 days ago [-]
How do you sue them in Europe? Can you call the US entity in an European court or they have branches in Europe that you can sue?
fuomag9 2 days ago [-]
Discord has a branch here in Europe “Discord Netherlands B.V.”
echelon 4 days ago [-]
Why do I need to sue Discord?
If Discord did something actually bad enough to warrant me suing them, I'm not going to let this deter me. I highly doubt I will ever need to do that. They're not going to make me lose my job or my limbs or worse.
This is just a company protecting itself from theoretical maximal downside, which any company will seek to do.
eadler 4 days ago [-]
Amusingly bluesky has the same style of (abusive) forced arbitration clause.
udev4096 4 days ago [-]
It's really funny to see discord users suddenly caring about their "data". Makes me wonder if extreme examples are necessary for people to realize the need of privacy
MiguelX413 4 days ago [-]
Regardless, this doesn't have anything to do with data.
udev4096 4 days ago [-]
It does, indirectly. The data gathered by some "discord scrapper" has to be somehow related to this arbitration. I refuse to believe otherwise
grubbs 4 days ago [-]
I literally can't keep up with every company I do business with. It's impossible so I just give up.
Gigachad 4 days ago [-]
This site has really been fighting things the wrong way. Reading every ToS, installing linux, replacing the firmware on your router, etc won't give you you rights back. It's an impossible battle. The real solution is having the laws updated to enshrine your rights. Years of promoting f-droid and custom android roms did far less for software freedom than the EU telling Apple they need to open up their platform, and telling tech companies to respect user privacy.
lolinder 4 days ago [-]
> Years of promoting f-droid and custom android roms did far less for software freedom than the EU telling Apple they need to open up their platform
It is way too early to call that this will result in a net benefit for software freedom.
We already have a platform—Android—that provides the freedoms that the EU is mandating Apple now provide. What we are getting is a second platform that now cannot provide an alternative type of service to consumers. That honestly feels like a net loss in consumer choice, not progress.
luqtas 4 days ago [-]
from where new laws get inspired?
if it wasn't for people doing their small thing, maybe the EU wouldn't require Apple "opening up"
TLDR. Send an email before 15th May to:
arbitration-opt-out@discord.com
"I am confirming that as of the date of this email, I am choosing to opt out of binding arbitration to settle disputes with Discord".
Make sure to send it from the email you use for your Discord account.
superbiebel 4 days ago [-]
Looks like all those laws the EU passed are doing their job because EU is exempt. Good to know that we still have a parliament and politicians that care about the common man.
wilg 4 days ago [-]
What are the top examples of legal cases where opting out of forced arbitration was useful?
rabbits77 4 days ago [-]
I am generally against forced arbitration, so I understand the push back against this. Then again, and maybe I am just overly tired right now, but I cannot imagine a scenario where I would be involved in any sort of legal action whatsoever against a chat server company? Can someone share with me a plausible example of where this would come into play for an ordinary user?
wongarsu 4 days ago [-]
Privacy violations, not adequately protecting your data, defamation, selling sensitive information you discussed on discord, ... There are a lot of crimes you can commit when entrusted with other people's communication. It's not just gamers on there, some companies use them as a slack alternative, people use them for private chats with other people where you might mention sensitive information, there are lots of communities of all sexual orientations and fetishes where making that data public could legitimately hurt the user.
Of course the reason everyone suspects is because a website that sells Discord chat logs became very well known. Basically you tell them a username and they scrape Discord servers, and if you tell them a user name they sell you everything they know about that person. This might have been a wakeup call for Discord regarding their potential legal liability.
thfuran 4 days ago [-]
>Privacy violations, not adequately protecting your data, defamation, selling sensitive information you discussed on discord, ... There are a lot of crimes you can commit when entrusted with other people's communication
Aside from defamation, which I can't really imagine actually occurring here, are any of those actually crimes? They just sound like dick moves.
rybosworld 4 days ago [-]
Most businesses are reactive, not proactive. They get a whiff that something has gone wrong, and they react.
In discords case, they are likely doing this because they are expecting a lawsuit in regards to the SpyPet scraping.
wnevets 4 days ago [-]
Is there a good reason why the FTC (or other federal agency) shouldn't ban this practice?
safety1st 4 days ago [-]
For the life of me I cannot understand how forced arbitration is legal. For the most part, you can't sign away your fundamental rights: if you sign a contract in which you forfeit your right to vote or to practice a particular religion, for example, that contract is invalid. Surely if your right to due process doesn't have this type of protection, it should.
taylorbuley 4 days ago [-]
The threat of mass-filed arbitration is almost like the new class action.
For me, I don't want to be forced to pay for my day in court (and the years of paperwork to get there).
genman 4 days ago [-]
Interesting. Does this forced arbitration also apply to EU?
> Here are some situations where contract terms may be judged unfair under EU rules:
> ...
> 17. Limited rights to legal action
> Terms which restrict how and where consumers can take legal action and obliging them to provide proof which is the responsibility of the other party to the contract.
paulgb 4 days ago [-]
This one in particular does not. I'm not sure about the enforceability of other forced arbitration agreements in the EU.
> To protect our users outside the United States, we’ve decided to modify this clause so that it only affects users in the United States. If you are outside of the United States, this clause does not apply to you
> To protect our users outside the United States, we’ve decided to modify this clause so that it only affects users in the United States.
"We're going to protect our users outside the United States from a thing we've freely chosen to do to our users in the United States."
jkaplowitz 4 days ago [-]
You’re correct that it does not, but it’s also ambiguous about what happens with respect to dispute rights for existing accounts if you later move to the US after the opt-out deadline, so the conservative approach is to opt out regardless of your country of residence.
SpaghettiCthulu 4 days ago [-]
That article is from the previous clause added in 2018, if I'm understanding correctly. Does it still apply to the new clause?
paulgb 4 days ago [-]
Good question, it does. Here’s the relevant line from their current ToS:
> IF YOU’RE A U.S. RESIDENT, YOU ALSO AGREE TO THE FOLLOWING MANDATORY ARBITRATION PROVISIONS.
I am not sure, I think it can't apply to Italy, as we have a tiered set of laws and one lower tier can't override higher tiers, and contracts/tos are the lowest tier
lnauta 4 days ago [-]
Not to be nitpicky but this message also talks of jury trial, which EU countries generally don't have.
AdrianB1 4 days ago [-]
Jury trial is a common form of the legal system in USA, but we have the equivalent here in Europe as regular court (no jury). The discussion is court vs. arbitration, not jury vs. something else. The same applies to Europe, if binding.
boomskats 4 days ago [-]
This all kinda feels like the consumer version of that investor-state dispute settlement clause that they tried to sneak into TTIP that one time.
qwerty456127 4 days ago [-]
How is all this lawyer stuff related to a chat app?
nilsherzig 4 days ago [-]
I don't know much about blue sky, but it's refreshing to just be able to scroll through the entire thread hahah
ranger_danger 4 days ago [-]
I can't even use discord in the first place because it always demands a mobile phone verification that I refuse to provide.
agluszak 4 days ago [-]
Let the enshitification begin!
TheRoque 4 days ago [-]
I'm very curious about the form that the discord enshittification will take. For sure, they can't do infinite storage, infinite streaming forever, yet they claim that they don't resell the data. And I doubt that nitro and other gimmicky fees give them any money. So I'm really curious about how it will look when they want to start cashing in on that massive community and personal data they sit on.
FireBeyond 4 days ago [-]
Think Reddit had it bad with r/jailbait, etc.? And how they (somewhat) cleaned house before the IPO? (A few years ago, anyway).
Discord is going to have a horror show if they try to attempt anything similar. It is -trivial- on Disboard or other Discord search sites to find Discord servers with explicit sexual themes aimed at and targetted at minors, and even worse than that, ones with explicit sexual themes that have age ranges that include minors and adults (like "Community of 14-28 year olds...").
When more people start pulling at that thread, it's going to unravel really quickly.
Discord has been doing -some- housecleaning, but only on the most egregious "sexual 'violence'" offenders.
johnea 4 days ago [-]
I think the title was misworded, is should have read:
get-out before it's too late...
Rendered at 04:52:16 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
At least Discord specified AAA arbitration. They're considered legitimate. There are arbitration services that are much worse. One is a front for a debt collection company.
[1] https://apps.adr.org/ClauseRegistryUI/faces/org/adr/extapps/...
Blog post from 2018: https://discord.com/safety/terms-of-service-feedback-and-cha... Archived version of ToS from may 2020: https://discord.com/terms/terms-of-service-may-2020
On the plus side, if you didn’t opt out before, you get a new opportunity to opt out, which according to the new terms will remove all disputes that have not yet been filed from the scope of previous arbitration agreements with Discord.
Since the clause only applies if you are a US resident, it’s very unclear how that opt-out deadline applies to existing Discord accounts for people who relocate into the US after the deadline. The conservative approach is to opt out wherever in the world you live, in case you later move to the US.
Such agreements should not be enforceable in the first place.
At least no constitutional amendment is required to fix this. These US Supreme Court rulings have been based on the Federal Arbitration Act, a regular statue, not on the Constitution (except as the source of Congress’s authority to override state law on this issue).
Disclosure: I work on it.
Whether or not you believe forced arbitration is bad, it seems like there have to be higher value causes to get up in arms about right now.
Yes indeed, but resistance against unfairness is not like a coin purse; it is like a muscle. When exercised, it seems like it increases its capacity.
The upside to having the reflex is that you stand up against unfairness more often. The downside is that it becomes a simple response to a stimulus rather than a conscious choice, which means you end up constantly caught up in the cause du jour without ever stopping to think about whether this particular case warrants your limited time or even whether it's actually a case of true unfairness.
Still in development, though is promising.
https://github.com/spacebarchat/spacebarchat
https://revolt.chat/
Supported by Democrats, killed by Republicans. Elections matter.
A lot of SCOTUS opinions in general seem pretty clear that they wish Congress would act and spell out what they want to happen, because that sure as hell is better than running to the courts to decide everything.
This might have been viable in 1795, but it feels ill suited to a world where we have billion dollar firms, legal staff on retainer, and contracts that have been revised like a codebase... versus consumers with no formal legal training.
Even if there wasn't an inherent inequality of field, the high cost of litigation also encourages a tendency to ask for the unreasonable. The people presenting the contract know there's probably not enough money in it for anyone but the wealthy and begrudged to try to challenge the contract, so there's little risk to asking for more permissions, less liability, and tighter binding on the consumer. In the worst case, the cost serves as an effective bludgeon for abusive behaviour: they'll go along because they can't afford to get a favourable judgement.
I dream of a world where there's no surprises in contracts-- basically there'd be a book of standard contracts filled out in a Mad Lib fashion. This would collapse a lot of the possibilities courts would have to deal with, resulting in a faster, predictable, almost deterministic legal system. If someone actually wanted to bring out a new clause, it would have to go through a highly-visible, paperwork-intensive vetting and discussion process. The Discords of the world then have to face very public scrutiny of their actions and motives: what makes your needs so special that they can't be dealt with using the standard contract for data services?
Let’s forget employment for a sec and just look at a product’s terms. Why can’t you just not use the product?
“It’s popular” is hardly an excuse for something new if you’re picking the platform.
If it’s an existing community and you feel forced to join a closed system with too many rules for your tastes, skip it. The community will suffer and hopefully they change to something you’ll like. But if not, screw em.
Besides, many may not know of the forced arbitration, despite it negatively impacting them. People are famously bad at these coordination problems.
In my personal experience, it’s worked out fine.
> Besides, many may not know of the forced arbitration, despite it negatively impacting them. People are famously bad at these coordination problems.
Not reading the thing you’re agreeing to is not an excuse. Otherwise it’d be an out for any contract.
And again, consumers can vote with their feet by only agreeing to terms that are understandable.
In the UK and other European countries, particularly regarding consumer goods or other kinds of contracts with an inherent asymmetry of negotiating power, there are lots of things you can’t agree in contracts, such as disclaiming general fitness for purpose and safety.
Deciding that you can’t agree away your rights to redress through the judicial system seems like a reasonable extension of these kinds of rules.
Okay, but you do realize other people have a different experience of the world, right?
Discord is super-easy to avoid right up until it turns out the only communities for something are on Discord. Or your teacher assigns you work that requires using it. Or your work requires you to use it. Or...
And the thing is, 99% of us will never run into any of those situations! It's easy not to be affected personally, right up until you are
> Not reading the thing you’re agreeing to is not an excuse.
Okay, but I did read the entire TOS at the time - now I'm required to also read every update and respond within a 30 day period. Which, again, easy not to be personally affected right up until you're on vacation in a region with bad internet, or just super-busy with work and you miss that one email
> And again, consumers can vote with their feet by only agreeing to terms that are understandable.
We ban all sorts of contracts - you can't sell yourself into slavery, you can't agree to commit a crime. So what's wrong with voting with our actual vote, instead?
Especially since I'm interested in protecting not just myself, but other people who might not realize how much this potentially disadvantages them.
If chat required interoperability like telephones do, this would not be an issue. The government has failed at making proper regulations
But I am going through forced arbitration right now in a personal lawsuit, and part of it is bleeding to a third party that does not arbitrate, which means real court. By all accounts I have been assured by my lawyer we are in a better position pursuing arbitration over litigation. Both seem to be quite expensive options, though fortunately there is a clause for legal fees to the prevailing side (and in my case evidence in my favor is airtight).
Any enlightenment would be wonderful.
One of the biggest consumer protections that a forced arbitration clause can kill is a class action lawsuit. If a corporation harms each consumer for $.30, there’s no real way to bring an individualized case over that. A class action is a viable option to hold the corporation to account.
Generally yes. One of the whole points of a class action is that they can address harms that are de minimis to an individual, but pretty bad for a society as a whole when repeated millions of times. So, generally the harm to you was small (probably small enough that you didn’t notice, or wouldn’t have bothered fighting the corporation on your own over it), so the compensation to you is also generally small.
As a class member, you can opt out of the class, and sue the company individually, if you think you’ve been significantly damaged more tban a typical member of the class. There’s usually a proactive step you have to opt out at some point.
Court is an essential part of government function that allows two parties to be judged fairly in a dispute. It's the great equalizer- at least in theory.
While the act of going to court with a lawyer is expensive, court itself is not expensive.
Moreover, court cases can be used as precedent for other court cases. Evidence found in one case can be used in another.
Arbitration works very differently.
Firstly, an arbitration clause may allow for the party with more "clout" to specify a less fair arbitration body. While the matter of arbitration fairness is complex, it's certainly not wild speculation that some bodies side more with some kinds of entities than others.
Secondly, arbitration requires up front payment. This can actually be a good thing for consumers in that it forces both parties to pay, but it costs a lot of money- thousands of dollars. Most people aren't going to spend that kind of money.
Thirdly, arbitration is not court, and findings in arbitration can't be used either in court, or in future arbitration cases. This provides an advantage to the big company, since they know what they might face, but each time a consumer goes after them, they're starting essentially from scratch!
Lastly, it precludes collective action. Each Discord user who feels wronged may not have the resources to arbitrate on their own, which is why the courts allow for class action lawsuits. Forced arbitration takes that option away.
https://arbitrationinformation.org/docs/problems/
The claim businesses make is that it is more efficient than court for people, but if that were actually the case then they would not need to constantly try to add forced arbitration.
Forced arbitration is only a win for the business, and the entire intent is to make it so that the amount of harm they have to do before it is worth anyone suing them has to be measured in thousands of dollars for any person. The only way corporations are held to account for the majority of their crime is through increasingly impossible class action lawsuits.
When is the USA going to realise that allowing companies to behave like this shouldn’t be allowed?
When this country stops fighting amongst itself over {race | skin color | wealth status | consumerism | brand loyalty | political affiliation} and aim our collective anger at companies, lobbyists, oil and gas, billionaires, and 0.01%. AKA the true people that end up writing our laws.
> and aim our collective anger at companies, lobbyists, oil and gas, billionaires
A deeply confused argument.
What the commenter meant is almost certainly "stop infighting in the lower and middle classes".
If Discord did something actually bad enough to warrant me suing them, I'm not going to let this deter me. I highly doubt I will ever need to do that. They're not going to make me lose my job or my limbs or worse.
This is just a company protecting itself from theoretical maximal downside, which any company will seek to do.
It is way too early to call that this will result in a net benefit for software freedom.
We already have a platform—Android—that provides the freedoms that the EU is mandating Apple now provide. What we are getting is a second platform that now cannot provide an alternative type of service to consumers. That honestly feels like a net loss in consumer choice, not progress.
if it wasn't for people doing their small thing, maybe the EU wouldn't require Apple "opening up"
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TLDR. Send an email before 15th May to: arbitration-opt-out@discord.com "I am confirming that as of the date of this email, I am choosing to opt out of binding arbitration to settle disputes with Discord". Make sure to send it from the email you use for your Discord account.
Of course the reason everyone suspects is because a website that sells Discord chat logs became very well known. Basically you tell them a username and they scrape Discord servers, and if you tell them a user name they sell you everything they know about that person. This might have been a wakeup call for Discord regarding their potential legal liability.
Aside from defamation, which I can't really imagine actually occurring here, are any of those actually crimes? They just sound like dick moves.
In discords case, they are likely doing this because they are expecting a lawsuit in regards to the SpyPet scraping.
For me, I don't want to be forced to pay for my day in court (and the years of paperwork to get there).
From https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-treat...
> Here are some situations where contract terms may be judged unfair under EU rules:
> ...
> 17. Limited rights to legal action
> Terms which restrict how and where consumers can take legal action and obliging them to provide proof which is the responsibility of the other party to the contract.
> To protect our users outside the United States, we’ve decided to modify this clause so that it only affects users in the United States. If you are outside of the United States, this clause does not apply to you
https://discord.com/safety/terms-of-service-feedback-and-cha...
"We're going to protect our users outside the United States from a thing we've freely chosen to do to our users in the United States."
> IF YOU’RE A U.S. RESIDENT, YOU ALSO AGREE TO THE FOLLOWING MANDATORY ARBITRATION PROVISIONS.
https://discord.com/terms#16
Discord is going to have a horror show if they try to attempt anything similar. It is -trivial- on Disboard or other Discord search sites to find Discord servers with explicit sexual themes aimed at and targetted at minors, and even worse than that, ones with explicit sexual themes that have age ranges that include minors and adults (like "Community of 14-28 year olds...").
When more people start pulling at that thread, it's going to unravel really quickly.
Discord has been doing -some- housecleaning, but only on the most egregious "sexual 'violence'" offenders.
get-out before it's too late...