8 ms·

Discord Applying Forced Arbitration - opt-out before it is too late!

186 points by MiguelX413 2y ago

superbiebel 2y 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.
MiguelX413 2y ago
https://neowin.net/forum/topic/1440754-discord-applying-forced-arbitration-opt-out-before-it-is-too-late https://neowin.net/forum/topic/1440754-discord-applying-forc... seems like a better link.
- carterschonwald 2y ago
  Hugged to death
  - hightrix 2y ago
    For anyone else with this problem. --- 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.
johnea 2y ago
I think the title was misworded, is should have read: get-out before it's too late...
genman 2y ago
Interesting. Does this forced arbitration also apply to EU?
- paulgb 2y 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 https://discord.com/safety/terms-of-service-feedback-and-changes https://discord.com/safety/terms-of-service-feedback-and-cha...
  - jkaplowitz 2y 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.
  - meepmorp 2y ago
    > 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."
  - SpaghettiCthulu 2y 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 2y 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. https://discord.com/terms#16 https://discord.com/terms#16
- lnxg33k1 2y ago
  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
grubbs 2y ago
I literally can't keep up with every company I do business with. It's impossible so I just give up.
- Wool2662 2y ago
  That's how you know it's working as intended!
- Gigachad 2y 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.
  - luqtas 2y 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"
  - lolinder 2y 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.
agluszak 2y ago
Let the enshitification begin!
- TheRoque 2y 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 2y 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.
jhgg 2y ago
FYI, the forced arbitration clause has existed in the ToS since 2018. This is not new. Blog post from 2018: https://discord.com/safety/terms-of-service-feedback-and-changes 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 https://discord.com/terms/terms-of-service-may-2020
- jkaplowitz 2y ago
  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 2y ago
    Thanks for the info. Just in case, I setup a script to send a daily mail to arbitration-opt-out@discord.com
    - jkaplowitz 2y 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.
teeray 2y ago
It really would be nice for some legislation to restore access to the justice system.
- jkaplowitz 2y ago
  Such legislation has gotten proposed in every session of Congress in recent years. It hasn’t passed yet. I hope it does, eventually.
  - coldpie 2y ago
    An example from 2022: https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/house-passes-bill-end-mandatory-arbitration-legal-disputes-2022-03-17/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/house-passes-bil... Supported by Democrats, killed by Republicans. Elections matter.
- bigstrat2003 2y 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.
  - koolba 2y 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.
    - foota 2y 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.
eadler 2y ago
Amusingly bluesky has the same style of (abusive) forced arbitration clause.
ranger_danger 2y ago
I can't even use discord in the first place because it always demands a mobile phone verification that I refuse to provide.
Animats 2y ago
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. [1] https://apps.adr.org/ClauseRegistryUI/faces/org/adr/extapps/clauseregistry/view/pages/clauseRegistry.jsf https://apps.adr.org/ClauseRegistryUI/faces/org/adr/extapps/...
- j-bos 2y ago
  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 2y 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 2y ago
  I’m sure Discord spends more money on lawyers than I do, so I’ll take any edge I can get.
taylorbuley 2y 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).
appplication 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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.
wilg 2y ago
What are the top examples of legal cases where opting out of forced arbitration was useful?
boomskats 2y 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.
fuomag9 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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".
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
- 2y ago
lolinder 2y ago
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 2y 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 2y 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.
rabbits77 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y ago
Is there a good reason why the FTC (or other federal agency) shouldn't ban this practice?
- safety1st 2y 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.
qwerty456127 2y ago
How is all this lawyer stuff related to a chat app?
udev4096 2y 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 2y ago
  Regardless, this doesn't have anything to do with data.
  - udev4096 2y ago
    It does, indirectly. The data gathered by some "discord scrapper" has to be somehow related to this arbitration. I refuse to believe otherwise
misswaterfairy 2y ago
If you're looking for an open-source, self-hostable, end-to-end encrypted Discord alternative, check out Spacebar. Still in development, though is promising. https://github.com/spacebarchat/spacebarchat https://github.com/spacebarchat/spacebarchat
- captainepoch 2y ago
  You also have https://github.com/revoltchat https://github.com/revoltchat, but people don't care about these alternatives, sadly.
  - beretguy 2y ago
    Direct link to their website: https://revolt.chat/ https://revolt.chat/
- tcfhgj 2y ago
  Or Matrix via Cinny
nilsherzig 2y ago
I don't know much about blue sky, but it's refreshing to just be able to scroll through the entire thread hahah

186 points by MiguelX413 2y 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.

MiguelX413 2y ago

https://neowin.net/forum/topic/1440754-discord-applying-forced-arbitration-opt-out-before-it-is-too-late https://neowin.net/forum/topic/1440754-discord-applying-forc... seems like a better link.

carterschonwald 2y ago
Hugged to death
- hightrix 2y ago
  For anyone else with this problem. --- 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.

johnea 2y ago

I think the title was misworded, is should have read: get-out before it's too late...

genman 2y ago

Interesting. Does this forced arbitration also apply to EU?

paulgb 2y 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 https://discord.com/safety/terms-of-service-feedback-and-changes https://discord.com/safety/terms-of-service-feedback-and-cha...
- jkaplowitz 2y 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.
- meepmorp 2y ago
  > 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."
- SpaghettiCthulu 2y 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 2y 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. https://discord.com/terms#16 https://discord.com/terms#16
lnxg33k1 2y ago
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

grubbs 2y ago

I literally can't keep up with every company I do business with. It's impossible so I just give up.

Wool2662 2y ago
That's how you know it's working as intended!
Gigachad 2y 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.
- luqtas 2y 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"
- lolinder 2y 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.

agluszak 2y ago

Let the enshitification begin!

TheRoque 2y 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 2y 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.

jhgg 2y ago

FYI, the forced arbitration clause has existed in the ToS since 2018. This is not new. Blog post from 2018: https://discord.com/safety/terms-of-service-feedback-and-changes 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 https://discord.com/terms/terms-of-service-may-2020

jkaplowitz 2y ago
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 2y ago
  Thanks for the info. Just in case, I setup a script to send a daily mail to arbitration-opt-out@discord.com
  - jkaplowitz 2y 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.

teeray 2y ago

It really would be nice for some legislation to restore access to the justice system.

jkaplowitz 2y ago
Such legislation has gotten proposed in every session of Congress in recent years. It hasn’t passed yet. I hope it does, eventually.
- coldpie 2y ago
  An example from 2022: https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/house-passes-bill-end-mandatory-arbitration-legal-disputes-2022-03-17/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/house-passes-bil... Supported by Democrats, killed by Republicans. Elections matter.
bigstrat2003 2y 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.
- koolba 2y 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.
  - foota 2y 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.

eadler 2y ago

Amusingly bluesky has the same style of (abusive) forced arbitration clause.

ranger_danger 2y ago

I can't even use discord in the first place because it always demands a mobile phone verification that I refuse to provide.

Animats 2y ago

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. [1] https://apps.adr.org/ClauseRegistryUI/faces/org/adr/extapps/clauseregistry/view/pages/clauseRegistry.jsf https://apps.adr.org/ClauseRegistryUI/faces/org/adr/extapps/...

j-bos 2y ago
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 2y 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 2y ago
I’m sure Discord spends more money on lawyers than I do, so I’ll take any edge I can get.

taylorbuley 2y 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).

appplication 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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.

wilg 2y ago

What are the top examples of legal cases where opting out of forced arbitration was useful?

boomskats 2y 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.

fuomag9 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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".
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
2y ago

lolinder 2y ago

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 2y 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 2y 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.

rabbits77 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y 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 2y ago

Is there a good reason why the FTC (or other federal agency) shouldn't ban this practice?

safety1st 2y 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.

qwerty456127 2y ago

How is all this lawyer stuff related to a chat app?

udev4096 2y 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 2y ago
Regardless, this doesn't have anything to do with data.
- udev4096 2y ago
  It does, indirectly. The data gathered by some "discord scrapper" has to be somehow related to this arbitration. I refuse to believe otherwise

misswaterfairy 2y ago

If you're looking for an open-source, self-hostable, end-to-end encrypted Discord alternative, check out Spacebar. Still in development, though is promising. https://github.com/spacebarchat/spacebarchat https://github.com/spacebarchat/spacebarchat

captainepoch 2y ago
You also have https://github.com/revoltchat https://github.com/revoltchat, but people don't care about these alternatives, sadly.
- beretguy 2y ago
  Direct link to their website: https://revolt.chat/ https://revolt.chat/
tcfhgj 2y ago
Or Matrix via Cinny

nilsherzig 2y ago

I don't know much about blue sky, but it's refreshing to just be able to scroll through the entire thread hahah