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Created October 18, 2018 03:50
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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.

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ghost commented Oct 20, 2018

@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.

@Alex-Beaven
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"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."

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ghost commented Oct 21, 2018

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/.

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

@rjungemann
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rjungemann commented Oct 22, 2018

@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.

@Tryptex00
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How do I get My IRL Name?

@waaberi
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waaberi commented Sep 1, 2020

How do I get My IRL Name?

It means your legal name.

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