Discord has changed their Terms of Service.md

Discord has changed their Terms of Service!

Unfortunately, this change comes with a revocation of your legal rights. Discord has revoked your right to sue (you must go through an arbitrator) and to congregate as a class action lawsuit.

Luckily, there is an opt-out for the clause, in which you must email arbitration-opt-out@discord.com, but you must do it within 30 days or you can no longer opt-out.

YOU CANNOT DELETE OR DEACTIVATE YOUR ACCOUNT TO OPT-OUT OF THE ARBITRATION CLAUSE

You can see the added clauses for yourself here: https://gist.github.com/Rapptz/c93697c9d59ec2f0d8071b7d0e907632

I will attempt to answer some common questions.

Is this enforceable?

In the United States, yes. This was decided by the Supreme Court in 2011. See https://gc.gy/7538114

In Europe, no. There are many clauses, a relevant one is Article 77 of the GDPR ("Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority").

Why does this matter?

Without the ability to congregate for a class action lawsuit, if Discord ever leaks your data or does something catastrophically bad to a large portion of the population you have no way to representatively sue together without each of you individually suing via the arbitrator.

Please see the following article: https://gc.gy/7538130

Essentially:

1. Your right to file a complaint in the court of law is removed.
2. The arbitration system tends to heavily favour the company rather than the consumer.
3. Since your right to pool similar complaints together is taken away, the amount of damage you can do to a company that has wronged you significantly is limited to those who are willing to arbitrate.

Why should I care? Other companies do it too!

By learning about this I hope that you will be more conscious about these arbitration clauses and how anti-consumer they are. You can't change the past, but you surely can't predict the future either.

Copy this email template and send it to arbitration-opt-out@discord.com

To whom it may concern,

Please be advised that I do not consent to the Arbitration Section of the updated Discord Terms of Service, and I also do not waive my right to resolve disputes on behalf of, or as part of, a class, consolidated, or representative proceeding. I recognize that Discord will not be bound by the provisions of the Arbitration Section. My username is username, and the email address associated with my account is email@address.com. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Your IRL Name
Your Username (with #)
Your Discord ID
Email Associated With Account
(Optional) Phone Number Associated With Account

To get your Discord ID, enabled Developer Mode, right click on your username or profile image, Copy ID

To get your Discord ID, enabled Developer Mode then right click one of your messages and Copy ID

To get your user ID number, you must specifically right-click on your username or profile image. If you click on a message and press 'Copy ID', you will instead copy the ID of that message.

I'd like to add, don't copy ID from one of your messages - this will get the message ID. Right click on your username instead, and copy ID - make sure username options like Change Nickname also appear in the same dropdown. If you need to be sure, take the ID you found and type <@ then the ID then >, and send the message. If it doesn't appear as a mention you've done it wrong

EDIT: @estherbolik beat me to it 😂 Their message wasn't there when I wrote this but this is still relevant

Updated my comment, thanks 👌

What about people elsewhere in the world?

@fdagpigj For people outside of America, the TOS works exactly the same as before (although IANAL so verify that for yourself)

Is this irrelevant for EU users?

Any specific thing to mention in the subject field?

Any specific thing to mention in the subject field?

I would assume, Arbitration Opt Out

No need for all that. Just include your DiscordTag.

None of this is needed. Just "I'd like to opt out"

https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/9p5uyp/latest_tos_update_revokes_your_right_to_sue/e81b57b/

How do we know that Discord will follow this?
Is it possible that Discord can apply any kind of discrimination to people who complete the Opt-out of any kind?

This is great, pushing this to lots of discord servers I know.

@Xevion we don't, which is why I do not expect the cited ruling to persist for long. It effectively says "you have no recourse against a failure to fulfill this contract." The law can't condone theft, so... we wait.

But, it is important to note that the cited ruling is probably far more specific than it is portrayed as being by news coverage. The original ruling relates to the claim of small amounts in a class action suit. If the inability to file a class action is actually enforceable then this means each case would need to be tried individually or brought before arbitration individually which is far more expensive for the company trying to enforce such a clause. A non-class judgement usually results in a better outcome for the consumer as well.

"Your opt out doesn’t need any specific template or form. It just needs the request to opt out and it must come from the email associated with your Discord account."

Here is a more recent example where the Supreme Court refused to hear a forced arbitration case: https://www.consumerreports.org/consumerist/supreme-court-allows-for-rare-win-in-customers-lawsuit-against-samsung/.

Do you have a citation to their ToS for any of this?

@awwright: From the gist above, "You can see the added clauses for yourself here: https://gist.github.com/Rapptz/c93697c9d59ec2f0d8071b7d0e907632", it links to https://discordapp.com/terms which has the following:

IMPORTANT NOTICE: THESE TERMS OF SERVICE CONTAIN A BINDING ARBITRATION PROVISION AND CLASS ACTION WAIVER. IT AFFECTS YOUR LEGAL RIGHTS AS DETAILED IN THE DISPUTE RESOLUTION AND CLASS ACTION WAIVER SECTION BELOW. PLEASE READ CAREFULLY.

How do I get My IRL Name?

How do I get My IRL Name?

It means your legal name.