roblox is litterary the same thing. ITS DISGUSTING. the tactics they do to get money from you are worst then discord using nitro and acessories to make you spent money really@checkcats_short
As a Canadian in the province of Ontario this forced arbitration stuff got struck down in the Supreme Court of Canada because it is illegal under the Consumer Protection Act. So essentially as a Canadian I would love to drag Discord kicking and screaming to the Consumer Rights Tribunal on your behalf
Fun fact. The terms of service are like "house rules" if you break them you're expelled from the club, but have no legal weight or relevance. If you want to class action sue them the ToS have no legal weight or value. You can't sign away your rights. The companies want you to believe so but they can't take them from you.
I would agree with you. Buuuuuuuuut, Discord has a cool 1 mil to slide the judge to create precedent that says actually their ToS is legally binding, and I don't have a counter argument to that beyond hope the courts aren't corrupt.
@magicball3201 Nah too traceable. Judge sees more in a safer manner by going golfing with lawyers. Whom tend to have an interest to dunk on corps due to their fat wallets. Once class actions start up as well usually cheaper to just settle.
This is likely true if the company does something actually illegal. It probably would not be true if it is because you feel like the house broke their own rules.
My work tried this. They said "Sign this document and we'll add $200 to your next paycheck." Everyone in my department signed it except me. I read it and it was basically signing away your rights to sue. I said "Nope, not going to happen." They told me I had to or I could be fired. I said "great" and I went to a lawyer. They stopped dead in their tracks and backtracked everything, and nobody got paid their $200 either. But... I unfortunately never got fired or got to take them to court. That was going to be fun.
That's what happens when you know your rights and how to exercise them. Edit: although you could have been fired and it may have taken years to resolve in court. But it's good they backed down.
Maybe they'll go and tell the developer team "Hey we don't have time to deal with all of this. Just add a button into the account settings that will automatize the opt-out process." And then, we'll just need to click a button instead of sending an e-mail.
I love sudden forced ToS changes that popup when you launch your auto-updating-with-no-way-to-disable software that force you to agree or close permanently. Really consumer friendly.
@@SakaiHazaki Feel free to share how to disable them on Windows. I've tried multiple methods and every one has resulted in failure. Android is the only place I've been able to avoid updates for years. I'm surprised they still let the old clients login.
Because it isn't, much less legally enforceable. Companies try and sneak little blurbs like that in for the soul purpose into scaring people into not taking them to court.
If they actually do something worth suing, they might end up doing what other large companies like Amazon have done, and quickly retract their arbitration clause. Basically, a lawfirm realized that you can automate 99% of the work required to submit arbitration claims for common issues, and flood companies with thousands of arbitration requests, completely crippling the entire arbitration system, and costing the companies millions in mandatory arbitration fees they promised to pay as part of the arbitration agreement. It's devious, and one of the best ways to fight back against what is a parallel and nonfunctional legal system in the US. When Amazon tried to find some excuse to get out of the arbitration clause they forced people to sign, the judge said "lol nope". I expect that if there's a real problem, it'll end up getting resolved one way or another. We've got a surprising amount of ways to fight back against illegal actions from companies.
I think Patreon doing the similar when they unilaterally terminate a comedian's account just because those within Patreon's Trust & Safety council did not like his jokes. Doing that however pissing off many of his patrons fans instead, one of them find out that they only need to pay nominal fee and Patreon are required to pay the rest of Arbitration filing fee. Many of his fans learn about it and follow suit. Patreon reaction after that was hilarious.
No online contract is genuinely binding when it comes down to it in court because it is just a puppet dancing on a screen, just because it forms the words arbitration or your xyz rights doesn't mean it has any legal value because it isn't technically real, even your signature on a document is not enforceable at the end of the day because it could not be your signature, all these "terms of use" are nonsense garbage
The biggest reason to hate forced arbitration: Tell ya what, we're gonna play a game where I pick the rules, the referee, who I pay to ref all of my games as long as I'm satisfied with how they do it, and there is no oversight or appeal, and it all happens behind closed doors with you agreeing you have to do whatever the ref says, including never tell people about the game after it's over.
You're allowed to not agree with the decision reached in arbitration and appeal that decision. Appeals are undertaken in actual court. They can't ban you from demanding the legal system's protection from their bad business practices.
As a person with a disability which means having absolutely no social or negotiation skills, I wonder how companies would react to a _Forced arbitration_ being met with _Force of violence_ - Which in my case (And in light of the repeated failures of medical professionals to cure it despite many many requests) must be considered a reasonable correction for the complete inability to negotiate and communicate which such a disability causes? 🤔
The issue here is most of these rules will get voided in court... You can technically put ANYTHING in fine lining for terms and conditions, though courts have the right to choose to not let them be admissible in court. So even if Discord says you agree to not file a class action lawsuit... you can still file a class action lawsuit. Discord does not override a court system. This is like someone killing someone and going "oh you can't take me to court because I said so"... no no no, you are the defendant. You do NOT get a right to choose how your legal proceedings go.
This is solely depends on the judge. The judge may state that the terms of service are illegal or the judge may agree to the terms of service. It’s 50/50. Mostly this is a civil matter, meaning this is not allowed to go to federal court or have a jury involved. You either settle out of court or allow the local judge make your decision.
@@DankGas- Please show me where in law does a defendant decide their legal proceedings. Defendants can FILE MOTIONS for different proceedings (such as jury trial, change of judge, etc etc), though they are not GRANTED their requests by right...
New legal tactic discovered: decentralized class action lawsuit “It’s not a class action lawsuit, I’m just representing all of these individuals in a series of definitely unrelated court cases using the exact same arguments, and I’ve charged each of them next to nothing for doing so.”
They tried to pull a big brain with group arbitration to give consumers more power, but sadly companies have wised up to this and have simply added a "you can't do that: go fornicate yourself" clause to the arbitration agreement.
I doubt most lawyers would be willing to do something like that. But mandatory arbitration can and has backfired. Since the company pays most of the costs (which they do because otherwise, the plaintiff might be able to argue they are unable to afford the cost of arbitration, and thereby be able to sue in court after all), if enough people take them to arbitration, they end up spending a ton on the costs. For examples, see what happened with Uber and DoorDash a few years ago.
Thank you for this, Seriously. I am a privacy, and rights advocate, and I use discord not because I want to; its where everyone I know is. I had no idea this was a thing, and I am glad I stumbled across your video. I've just sent my email to them, and BCC'd myself to 2 different emails, a copy of it.
@@FastKnight401 You can absolutely sue them. This is written in discords ToS, and those are not legally binding and have no legal grounds whatsoever. This is because consumer protection laws will tell you that ToS and EULA's are so long and often confusing that any given person is not expected to actually read all of it, let alone understand all of it, therefore this has no legal ground.
@@Z38_US from what I've read, arbitration agreements are generally enforced in the USA, though many countries don't enforce it. ToS and EULA actually are legally binding, they're considered contracts. However, this means they have to follow contract law, so if you or the company resides in an area where arbitration agreements aren't enforced, then that term is void. This is probably why it only applies to US residents.
@@2rx_bni they cant since its based on where the person is from rather than where discord is based so if they somehow do that to somebody outside of the US they can be sued because of it
TOS says: "IF YOU’RE A U.S. RESIDENT, YOU ALSO AGREE TO THE FOLLOWING MANDATORY ARBITRATION PROVISIONS" so if you don't live in the US, you are subject to different laws
@@capnryna Yeah, for example, I live in a country where arbitration clauses are illegal (as far as I know), but I'm still going to send the email in case I move to the US sometime in my life while that is still in effect.
They should make it so if a company has a “you can’t sue me” clause in their TOS then the customer should be able to say “you can’t sue me either” lmao
That’s what it says pretty much. It’s just that you’d honestly have better chances of winning if discord attempts to sue you than if they try to “arbitrate” with you.
i mean... you'd have to do something really harmful to discord's bottom line for them to want to sue you. The random discord user is probably not going to be able to do anything like that lol
@@prodbywarpipe The funny thing about Discord... I have millions of throw away accounts. Which one should I use? I wonder. Oh... Their Contract doesn't apply to me. I simply never existed, that's all.
Pull a class action lawsuit against the judges that side with the company 97% of the time because that is literally an unbalanced legal system that has probably resulted in millions of dollars of unpaid damages to parties who are most definitely unfairly judged to not get the payouts they deserve.
i have sent a request to be opted out twice, both time were ignored and no reply, discord is going to end up with a massive lawsuit eventually im calling it
They can not legally ignore it so if I were you I’d continue to send it and document wether they do it or not as you could be the reason they could get sued
3 letters for you: *B. C. C.* Start sending YOURSELF blind carbon copies so that you can document it in court if need be. You can sue the fucking shit out of them if they claim that you never requested an opt-out, since you have the proof that you sent in that request in the BLIND CARBON COPY that THEY cannot see.
eventually one of them will get too overzealous and do something as bad as blatent ID theft of their users and try to hide behind forced arbitration before arbitration gets outlawed
@@Diddz Hmm kinda reminds me of "If everything is X, no one is", what I means if all comanies ToS has arbitration and "can't sue us" clause, court would just throw those out the window.
@@Diddz there's apparently some law in works in congress that would let you sue a company directly for privacy violations. I was unfortunately not tipped off on what name it was. And I'm certain the lobbying force against it is massive.
Luckily, we have the GDPR, in which the EU just says "Nope, I don't care if you're in the US only, you have EU data subjects so here's a fine of up to 4% of your gross global earnings"
@@witherschat Their ToS applies to me as an EU citizen as much as it does to you. If I harass someone on Discord, I am in breach of their ToS. However, this specific clause only applies to American residents because they wouldn't legally be able to uphold it in the rest of the world. Arbitration exists in the rest of the world, but it's usually a precursor to a lawsuit - you can't just waive your right to sue - it doesn't work that way elsewhere.
I like the employee specific clause of yeah you cant sue us for harassment, abuse, wrongful termination, discrimination or retaliation. Really makes you wonder
I was initially getting discouraged because it felt as if you were inflating an explanation for runtime, but you actually covered all the bases really well. You researched the topic really well and did an incredible job of presenting the information, before telling us what to do to fix it. This video is exceptionally well done and I appreciate it a lot. Thank you.
US citizen here. thanks for posting a video regarding this. I take law classes and went over abuse of TOS and ironically still agree to BS like this. i just sent them the email and hopefully the honor the opt out. Put an end to EULA and abuse of TOS!
My nervous dummass wrote the message wrong. At the end of the message where it should say "Discord provisions requiring arbitration" But I wrote "Discord provisions arbitration" (without the word requiring smh)... Now I'm wondering if I should send a second email or leave that one as is smh...
Can't wait for discord's legal team to piss themselves when they see the amount of arbitration opt-out requests that suddenly come flooding in over the next month or so thanks to this video.
I first got wind of this back in late April, sent my letter as soon as I read the TOS update and verified its legitimacy. Sent April 19th. Yeah, They're more than likely *flooded*
I have had 1 run-in with an arbitrator because a seller refused to properly refund me as I "damaged the product". Somehow, the arbitrator was unable to understand how a tripod could possibly get some very slight dust on the feet (it couldn't have been from simply having stood on the floor, it must have been outside according to him). My entire case hung in the balance of the overall intelligence of 1 person. Since then, when I see arbitration requirements, I go "NAH FAM".
No they probably understood. They probably were ignorant instead as they are paid by the company to save them money & assume everyone is lying to them.
This is a reflection of a larger issue in the American legal system. This forced arbitration clause is a part of so so many terms and conditions. AND it doesn't necessary hold up in court - people have created class action lawsuits DESPITE force arbitration being a part of terms and conditions! There is some good news - forced arbitration in terms of service isn't iron-clan law. USA has some legal precedent where agreeing to forced arbitrary in the terms and conditions isn't held up by the courts. There have been class action lawsuits that happen DESPITE this forced arbitration clause. And there are lawyers that make their legal fees separate (and covered) separately so it isn't taken out of awarded money.
It depends on the court and the case, a lot of lawyers would probably tell you that you're screwed if you sign one of those. Also im not a lawyer so dont sue pls
As a Swedish student in law school, i am now certain that i can sue them for saving my messages and not deleting them after i delete my account. Edit: Woaaahhhh. Chill yall i'm 16. Yall would have to wait at least 4 years til i can file a lawsuit. And that alone can take a month or two.
You can but it would end up being a fight of who runs out of money first most likely so if Discord really doesn't delete those messages after deleting your account, it's better to contact DPA and hope they pick it up and forward it to the right bodies in EU that handle GDPR violations which this would be.
@@oracle372 I believe it's more that you should choose to have them saved after deleting your account rather than the saving in general but I'm not a legal student/lawyer so don't quote me on it
I am fairly good at reading up on the discord terms and services but mostly when it comes to user violations as I mod for multiple servers, before this I had 0 clue as to what arbitration was or the fact that I agreed to it lol. Thanks once again for the insightful video!
technically this is exactly what waivers are, except waivers only cover so much, and one still can sue in cases of negligence (as far as I know, I'm not exactly studying law)
@@rydergolde3169 *GROSS negligence Regular negligence is included in waivers like: > Whoops, did my workers fit that bolt in the [thing]? It's in the safety manual [issued by my company].... THIS is Gross negligence: > Eh I don't have the budget to print safety manuals gonna do it if Q1 profits are good [unable to maintain safety standards] OR > Oh whoops I was partying last night and completely forgot to order new bolts so my workers have to put ones with cracks in them [preventable compromise of safety standards] OR Meh glue and tape should work just fine [bruh]
@@dipanwitamandal7289 ahhh tbh i probably knew or felt there was *some* kind of difference when i wrote this but not only do i not remember, my brain is full of fog rn lmao either way, thanks for the clarification
@@helpfulDeathgod In which cases is an arbitration agreement considered to be invalid? An arbitration agreement shall be invalid in the following circumstances: Disputes that arise in a field beyond the jurisdiction of the arbitration institution; The parties to the arbitration agreement do not have competence in accordance with the law; The parties to the arbitration agreement do not have civil capacity to act in accordance with the Civil Code; The form of the arbitration agreement is not in compliance with Article 16 of the 2010 Law on Commercial Arbitration; A party is deceived, intimidated, or coerced during the execution of the arbitration agreement and requests a declaration that such arbitration agreement is invalid; and The arbitration agreement violates prohibitions specified by the law.
@@justinwyllie3359 that second to last bit, "A party is deceived...." , i'm assuming that "during the execution of the arbitration agreement". does this include the default opt-in being buried in a lengthy and technically dense terms of service? it doesn't say during the execution of the arbitration, but dueing the execution of the *arbitration agreement* which would be the signing or agreeing to the TOS, wouldn't it? that would make it invalid from the beginning. you could also argue that this was done in bad faith, since it's reasonable to assume that the average person isn't going to read the entire TOS for discord, or that they would understand the section dealing with disputes.
if that was the case we would definitely have a lot of bs scam products having "user agrees to pay us 100 billion bazillion dollars" in their TOS by now
@@uguraktas8018 Forced arbitration is legal, but you can't have your right to redress taken away by a contract. Arbitration is just a step taken on the path to a lawsuit. A step that Discord has to pay for in full.
@@Xahnel I'm far from knowledgeable in this kind of thing, so hypothetically what channels would one have to go through for this redress? (I'm not planning anything except for getting educated)
Should be pointed out that people do not even need to read terms of services from a legal standpoint. By definition they're all unconscionable contracts, which means they absolutely cannot hold up to legal scrutiny. Since you're unlikely to know what unconscionable contract means, it's a contract so heavily weighed to one side of the agreement that it is not considered legally binding. If Discord causes you financial harm due to their action or wilful inaction, you have every single right to sue them regardless of the place of your residence or whatever reads in their TOS or EULA.
It's weird that there is a concept in the US that it's possible for a contract to lessen your rights? Because in any normal country if you can sue you can sue and no contract can take away that right for you, even if it's repeated 100 times there.
The fact that I can just hide this clause in a terms of service and for it to be fully allowed is surprising. I have never seen this before, and I'm probably ignorant to the countless other platforms that have this same clause.
@@karmawsyd213 it wouldn't apply to german users for example, something such as the arbitration clause would be very blatantly infringing on your rights here and thus, despite it being a part of the ToS, it couldn't be upheld in any court. more likely than not discord would be fucking themselves over even more with such a clause over here. (take everything i say with a grain of salt, we only properly discussed digital ToS in a single lecture in uni and my memory is a little hazy, all i know is discord would be up shit's creek if they tried to pull a sketchy move like that here)
@@panzerfich mandatory arbitration clauses in TOS aren't allowed in the entirety of the EU which is why you don't see those targeted towards people in the EU. The reason they do it for people in the US is because it's perfectly legal there.
Finally I understand why this is an issue, I feel like I've seen this dozens of times before now and the entirety of the explanation was "they force arbitration and that's bad."
Forced arbitration should be made illegal. The fact that these companies can do things that are borderline messed up just because of something your required to agree to upon signup is just messed up. I’m not targeting discord here, but look at many major apps that use forced arbitration, like Roblox as an example. Roblox has done a lot of messed up stuff but nobody can do anything about it because of their terms of service (I am aware about the 10 million dollar court case).
@@iflax7460 "It's your choice to use their service" isn't going to work when monopolies crop up or there's otherwise a dependence on a certain service with no other reasonable options to continue your day to day activities or business.
gotta love how the youtube algorithm didnt push this video until well over a month after the deadline and its already too late to opt out... thaaannnks
Hey, with arbitration, In US law you can appeal by just suing the arbitrator. Specifically, the Federal Arbitration Act establishes that you can appeal arbitration decisions by petitioning a court.
mate, I was aware of forced arbitration from Loius Rossman's videos, but watched this one through. But I'm dropping a comment to say that it really just hit me how great your videos are. You explain things so concise, to the point, easy to digest (forgot to mention: entertainining). You may focus on discord but I feel like if you made videos like this on anything I'd watch haha. Keep it up man love your videos.
Discord does train AI on your data. They have two patents for it. They acquired a subsidiary company called Sentropy, inc. It is literally an AI startup to combat hate speech on the internet.
@@RaceBandit If you read the patents, it dynamically tags users based on all of their conversations. Not just hate. Anything you’re interested in, any messages in servers (and DMs aswell), any spaces or connections you have a presence in, any friends, it all contributes to your AI tags in their system. This isn’t just bad things either. It also tags people with good things if that’s what its judgement is. Point being, Discord has a way to categorise, track and profile every user according to their interests.
This info word have been vastly more IMPORTANT if I had seen it BEFORE the DEADLINE, TO OPT OUT of Arbitration instead of 2 months after the deadline cut off.😭
Discord has a net worth of 14 billion, a 50 million dollar lawsuit would be less than half of one percent... that's not a good punishment, it just tells them they can afford to keep doing whatever it is they'd be sued for
fyi: this guy probably scammed people or bought a scammers account to get that checkmark, he has 1 video from 3 days ago with only 200 views yet has over 100,000 subs
Hi, I am personally involved in class action lawsuit before. Few years back there was a case where the big banks in Australia was being sued for overcharging fees. Basically what happens is that a law firm will just start suing on your behalf, you can opt out but no reason to. Since there are often many plaintiff's payout isn't huge, I got like $550 or so. I think there are some underlying issues with discord that is waiting to blow up, that's why they changed the tos. Unlikely it will bankrupt discord but $500 is $500.
I'm not a lawyer, but I doubt that a lot of forced arbitration is legally enforcable. Contracts aren't some magic "you've signed your soul away", if something is legally unjustifiable, that part of the contract is null and void.
The real issue is the law enforcement loophole. Lawsuits are doubly costly for citizens, because they need to dedicate precious time to it and there are legal fees on top of that.
they do have some legal enforceability but if it was something major like discord is found to be harboring a ton of CP or something well that falls flat very quickly, if its a major personal data leak of millions of users it might protect some people but ultimately they will lose if ithey're found to be at fault for the leak or something along the lines and if not well the government will step in and sue them anyways.. However whenever that happens its not like the consumers are getting any funds it all goes to lawyers..
I feel like things like this could be easily argued in court as them hiding this agreement to arbitration under a lot of legal text as well as not providing clear ways to opt in or out, thus making the agreement void, but I'm not a lawyer and I don't know shit
(this doesnt affect me specifically cuz i am in the EU, but it might affect others) IMHO I did **NOT** agree to Discord's TOS, and I'm betting that you didn't either. Sure, i clicked the checkbox that says that "I agree to the TOS", BUT 1. I have never actually read it in its entirely 2. I didn't actually sign it (ike with a signature) 3. I had no intent to actually agree with it. 4. I only clicked the check box so the app let me complete the account creation process, and for no other purpose.
@@Xnoob545 digital signature nowadays is clicking the box where it says you read the ToS and accept them. That's the only way to use apps and their services, so you consent to whatever is written. Just because it's not a physical signature doesn't mean that it's invalid
Unfortunately thats not how it works. It can be under 300 paragraphs of legal text, but at the end of the day the user is responsible for reading and understanding the entire thing. In the EU you are informed of every change to the ToS of a service. Some people call it "EULA roofying" where the user is mislead as much as possible and in practice forced to accept an extremely disadvantageous EULA/ToS just to get a product or a service.
Recently, I just learned the definition of the word discord, and it is the most fitting name for the platform. discord noun lack of concord or harmony between persons or things:
3:48 this example, while obviously not a 1 to 1 example of every situation, is honestly, for me, a very very good way of explaining what could happen!👍 and I mean that!
Companies putting "you cant sue us" in their TOS/EULA shouldn't even be allowed, companies should always be open to be sued to keep them in check, so they wont do dumb sh*t in the future
When i got asked to agree to the new terms mid April, i had a feeling forced arbitration would be in there and of course when i scrolled down it was. I would have warned more people at the time but i didnt know if people cared that much about it. i guess they only realized they cared when big youtubers talked about it. It would have been better if this video came out earlier, as this is a time sensitive issue. Maybe as a result of these videos people will look out for arbitration clauses in any new terms they come across, because this is super common now. At least discord had the slightest mercy to set up an email for opt outs; other companies make it so much less convenient
No way this is enforceable. I get the feeling if you went to a lawyer and asked to sue discord they'd say something akin to "they can't sign away your right to the law." in relation to the arbitration clauses. These things most of the time is to get people to not try in the first place, or guide them to do things in a way where they achieve nothing.
shut up your wrong in a ideal system there would be no forced law and everything would settled by agreements this is why anarco capitalism is the best posible system and sadly the current bogus US copratism is the closest we will get to a true free market
One small footnote: If you live in San Francisco County, CA you can still pursue them in small claims court according to their "Exceptions" section. There are also a handful of other exceptions concerning certain types of disputes like copyright, moral rights, and "unauthorized use of services" but that last one does leave a bit of an open question.
Glad this came across my feed, thank you for spreading the info and keep those who will do something informed. Don't plan on suing discord, but... you never know.
Just writing to say you really did manage to make the video very entertaining. I'm in EU and it was both fun and educational (even when it only applies to US). You are doing an awesome job!
I was wondering when NTTS was gonna do a video on this. People have been talking about it everywhere, so I figured the Discord RUclipsr would've been joined that party early 😛But it does make sense to take a bit so he can get all the information together to not only explain the main thing, but give plenty of context that most others did not. I might've eventually gone ahead and opted out myself after doing a bit of personal research. I just really wanted to hear it from someone who's reputation I know of like NTTS to hear that context, and you can bet I've opted out now.
shut up your wrong in a ideal system there would be no forced law and everything would settled by agreements this is why anarco capitalism is the best posible system and sadly the current bogus US copratism is the closest we will get to a true free market
Make sure you have proof that you sent it; that may be the bare minimum afforded. There's no way Discord's team will send back a statement acknowledging you're not falling for their games, because then they'd be made accountable if they DID try something with you. And if they ignored it or pretended you never sent it, you have the proof to say "not only have I got the proof, but I'll see you in court". Keep the receipt, scam the cheat.
@@Demolisher1433-ci2jx Send it. I don't think they'd want to do anything negative to you bc then you could sue for retaliation Make sure to copy yourself on the email you send also so they know that you know they got it
Just for the record, class action lawsuits are actually kind of a crappy deal for individuals, because while the payouts can be very large the actual amount that each individual in the "class" gets is kind of piddley. You don't do a class action to get compensation, you do a class action to make a point.
I feel like TOS in apps you often wouldn't bother to read about should be presented differently and either have a summarized version for a quick-read, or a different way to know what you're getting into. Because honestly most people won't bother reading TOS on most of what they use online, compared to IRL things, like food, and other important stuff they might buy.
Always check to make sure you're not giving up info to some spambot, even if it comes from a source as such. This appears to check out and I appreciate No Text To Speech for sharing it.
This an incredibly common practice believe it or not, as somebody who actually reads TOSs and Privacy Policies I have seen this clause tens of times. Luckily, it doesn't hold up to well when to do so would require a company to fight international cyber laws,
god this youtube algorithim didnt push this video to me until now. sucks that my only option is to delete my account now and make a new one in order to opt out, but im actually okay with that. i may have purchases i have made that im going to lose, but being forced into arbitration sounds way worse.
I love that we are legally bound to a document that they openly are aware people don't read and is intentionally written for laymen people not be able to read.
stuff like this is why I never pay cash to any companies for anything online, I'd rather trust the pirates tbh. it all feels silly and useless, what with me somehow managing to convince each of my devices that I'm in a seperate country with zero use of vpn(no idea how I did that, mostly tech problems I purposefully avoided fixing), having each account seperate and generally unlinked for different groups of websites, randomly making burner accounts every time I visit a website with strange unique password fetishes, being blatantly honest with less personal information in a way that makes it seem like I'm making stuff up, which for example keeps real life friends from accidentally blowing my cover if they call me by my "nickname" ingame since I conveniently left out the part where it's my real name, or a part of it is anyways, probably, you don't know. ect. my favorite idea was giving scammers random pun names so I can keep track of where scammers are getting their info from, like some random old lady calls me and asks if I'm her grandson and I tell her "no, this is brian freiz(brain freeze)" and next thing I know all the scammers are calling me bre-an frezno, then I get a call from some chick asking if I'm Rian and I say "wrong number, this is don tramble(don't ramble)" and next thing I know I'm getting 12 calls a day asking for "Don". it really pays to be cautious. though I had to stop with the fake names when I realized that ANY response immediately marked you as an easy target, even just reading their text messages counted, and it was getting to the point where I had to mute my phone because it was just ringing every minute. another fun thing though, I've had a lot of "hackers" and "scammers" try to scare or startle me by knowing my location, but whatever the deal is with my devices, it tricks them too XD honestly you'd think knowing my phone number would be enough to let them know where I live, but I guess they just ignore that in favor of their fancy scary computer magic.
Genuine question about sending the opt-out email, should I include my real name? This probably sounds dumb but I just wanted to make sure that's what I'm supposed to do before sending it.
Yes, It's a legal Letter so it need your legal Name on it. When ,Out really sue Discord later on and they say you have agreed to forced abitration even If you sent thr opt Out Mail, they could rule that the opt Out Mail ist from a Person with your Discord Händler Name and Not from you. So yes, use your legal Name.
I don’t think you can truly opt out though. Discord doesn’t send you an email confirming that they received your opt out request so they can just lie and say they never got it
I think there is no point. It would just be an indicator to them that you are a trouble user. While I would love to opt out, I’m not sure if this is also some sort of scam. There have been issues with the login QR code before, so I’ve heard. There is no telling. If the problem is widespread enough, the company will get backlash, and people will go back to TeamSpeak.
Binah (비나, Bina) is the Patron Librarian of the Library's Floor of Philosophy, formerly the Sephirah of Lobotomy Corporation's Extraction Team, and a former Arbiter of the Head. She is met after promoting the Library to Star of the City and subsequently unlocking her floor.
Nothing screams "Safe and secure platform" like "You're not allowed to take us to court if something goes terribly wrong"
agreed
yyep.
Most platforms have a forced arbitration policy.
@@goofyahdemoman1134 'cause they dont wanna get sued and make themselves immune
@@goofyahdemoman1134And most platforms aren't safe and secure. Welcome to the 21st century
Roblox did this before, and a 10 year old took 10 million away. History is repeating itself.
Yeah. But discord is worse because there’s a lot of disgusting stuff and in general a wasteland.
roblox is litterary the same thing. ITS DISGUSTING. the tactics they do to get money from you are worst then discord using nitro and acessories to make you spent money really@checkcats_short
@@frogtopg So is Roblox, your point?
Yeah
real.
As an australian i'd love to sue discord on someone elses behalf
A great counter to US arbitration.
As a non US resident, I too would love to sue discord on someone elses behalf.
you didn't even bother watching the video did you?
need more ppl like this
As a Canadian in the province of Ontario this forced arbitration stuff got struck down in the Supreme Court of Canada because it is illegal under the Consumer Protection Act. So essentially as a Canadian I would love to drag Discord kicking and screaming to the Consumer Rights Tribunal on your behalf
Fun fact. The terms of service are like "house rules" if you break them you're expelled from the club, but have no legal weight or relevance. If you want to class action sue them the ToS have no legal weight or value. You can't sign away your rights. The companies want you to believe so but they can't take them from you.
that used to be true. everything legally is slowly balancing the other way in the USA however. Recent precedent does not look good.
I would agree with you. Buuuuuuuuut, Discord has a cool 1 mil to slide the judge to create precedent that says actually their ToS is legally binding, and I don't have a counter argument to that beyond hope the courts aren't corrupt.
@@magicball3201 That's why you don't sue them individually, you do a class action law suit. Apes strong together.
@magicball3201 Nah too traceable. Judge sees more in a safer manner by going golfing with lawyers. Whom tend to have an interest to dunk on corps due to their fat wallets.
Once class actions start up as well usually cheaper to just settle.
This is likely true if the company does something actually illegal. It probably would not be true if it is because you feel like the house broke their own rules.
My work tried this. They said "Sign this document and we'll add $200 to your next paycheck." Everyone in my department signed it except me. I read it and it was basically signing away your rights to sue. I said "Nope, not going to happen." They told me I had to or I could be fired. I said "great" and I went to a lawyer. They stopped dead in their tracks and backtracked everything, and nobody got paid their $200 either. But... I unfortunately never got fired or got to take them to court. That was going to be fun.
wow, they just pissed their pants instantly
"sign it"
"i like my rights"
"you wanna get fired bitch??"
"I'll take you to court"
"..okay i didn't expe- WAIT, W.. OKAY FINE NEVERMIND NEVERMIIND"
That's what happens when you know your rights and how to exercise them.
Edit: although you could have been fired and it may have taken years to resolve in court. But it's good they backed down.
This reminds me of people taking the "safe and secure" substance without question it.
200$ is peanuts! Thats a ridiculous small amount of money! Screw that workplace.
mm Discord's legal team must be just thrilled with a sudden flood of opt out emails
probably it is mostly automatic
and imagine if for some reason user who aren't from USA started sending those emails in masses too
Maybe they'll go and tell the developer team "Hey we don't have time to deal with all of this. Just add a button into the account settings that will automatize the opt-out process." And then, we'll just need to click a button instead of sending an e-mail.
@@shadymedic they will probably automatically parse the incoming mail, look if the id matches the mail, and then mark it in the account/database
hey name, fancy encountering you here :D
I love sudden forced ToS changes that popup when you launch your auto-updating-with-no-way-to-disable software that force you to agree or close permanently.
Really consumer friendly.
Linux doesn't do automatic updates for Discord properly. So i'm just started using the webUI all the time.
Its also extremely illegal making it legally unenforceable. Aka its just there to scare people.
You can disable auto updates for discord on both computer and android, not sure about apple.
yeah im still on the old mobile ui(even as it starts to break down with not repair) since I refuse to update
@@SakaiHazaki Feel free to share how to disable them on Windows.
I've tried multiple methods and every one has resulted in failure.
Android is the only place I've been able to avoid updates for years. I'm surprised they still let the old clients login.
i dont understand how thats legally alowed
TOS: "ur not allowed to sue me or get banned from discord"
absurd
Welcome to America.
@@2rx_bni pensive emoji
In the EU, it isn't.
Because it isn't, much less legally enforceable. Companies try and sneak little blurbs like that in for the soul purpose into scaring people into not taking them to court.
Well its not, you can easily win in such case. But they write it there anyways just to scare.
Corpos have been doing this "you agree not to sue us" crap for decades. Courts throw this out in a breath. Contracts do not supersede law.
yeah, but arbitration agreements are generally enforceable in the USA. Many countries have outlawed them though.
If they actually do something worth suing, they might end up doing what other large companies like Amazon have done, and quickly retract their arbitration clause. Basically, a lawfirm realized that you can automate 99% of the work required to submit arbitration claims for common issues, and flood companies with thousands of arbitration requests, completely crippling the entire arbitration system, and costing the companies millions in mandatory arbitration fees they promised to pay as part of the arbitration agreement. It's devious, and one of the best ways to fight back against what is a parallel and nonfunctional legal system in the US.
When Amazon tried to find some excuse to get out of the arbitration clause they forced people to sign, the judge said "lol nope". I expect that if there's a real problem, it'll end up getting resolved one way or another. We've got a surprising amount of ways to fight back against illegal actions from companies.
I think Patreon doing the similar when they unilaterally terminate a comedian's account just because those within Patreon's Trust & Safety council did not like his jokes.
Doing that however pissing off many of his patrons fans instead, one of them find out that they only need to pay nominal fee and Patreon are required to pay the rest of Arbitration filing fee. Many of his fans learn about it and follow suit.
Patreon reaction after that was hilarious.
@@rashidisw fuck around and find out xD
The comedian was Owen Benjamin, and the whole saga is _hilarious_
No online contract is genuinely binding when it comes down to it in court because it is just a puppet dancing on a screen, just because it forms the words arbitration or your xyz rights doesn't mean it has any legal value because it isn't technically real, even your signature on a document is not enforceable at the end of the day because it could not be your signature, all these "terms of use" are nonsense garbage
In America, corporations are people. They have rights too, and they are more important than yours
The biggest reason to hate forced arbitration: Tell ya what, we're gonna play a game where I pick the rules, the referee, who I pay to ref all of my games as long as I'm satisfied with how they do it, and there is no oversight or appeal, and it all happens behind closed doors with you agreeing you have to do whatever the ref says, including never tell people about the game after it's over.
You're allowed to not agree with the decision reached in arbitration and appeal that decision. Appeals are undertaken in actual court. They can't ban you from demanding the legal system's protection from their bad business practices.
As a person with a disability which means having absolutely no social or negotiation skills, I wonder how companies would react to a _Forced arbitration_ being met with _Force of violence_ - Which in my case (And in light of the repeated failures of medical professionals to cure it despite many many requests) must be considered a reasonable correction for the complete inability to negotiate and communicate which such a disability causes? 🤔
@@dieseldragon6756 The fact that you can clearly articulate this would be 100% held against you.
@@Xahnel the force of violence does not care
@@FlantisFroggu You go ahead and attempt applying said force. Go on, we're all waiting, it's boogaloo time.
The issue here is most of these rules will get voided in court... You can technically put ANYTHING in fine lining for terms and conditions, though courts have the right to choose to not let them be admissible in court. So even if Discord says you agree to not file a class action lawsuit... you can still file a class action lawsuit. Discord does not override a court system. This is like someone killing someone and going "oh you can't take me to court because I said so"... no no no, you are the defendant. You do NOT get a right to choose how your legal proceedings go.
The defendant does get a right to choose how their legal proceedings go in a criminal trial but go off
@@DankGas-class action suits are civil suits different rulings but go off
This is solely depends on the judge. The judge may state that the terms of service are illegal or the judge may agree to the terms of service. It’s 50/50. Mostly this is a civil matter, meaning this is not allowed to go to federal court or have a jury involved. You either settle out of court or allow the local judge make your decision.
@@Unchainedfulthis would absolutely be a federal civil matter, civil courts in the US can do juries too.
@@DankGas- Please show me where in law does a defendant decide their legal proceedings. Defendants can FILE MOTIONS for different proceedings (such as jury trial, change of judge, etc etc), though they are not GRANTED their requests by right...
New legal tactic discovered: decentralized class action lawsuit
“It’s not a class action lawsuit, I’m just representing all of these individuals in a series of definitely unrelated court cases using the exact same arguments, and I’ve charged each of them next to nothing for doing so.”
It's an act of charity because they have gone through a bad situation :)
They tried to pull a big brain with group arbitration to give consumers more power, but sadly companies have wised up to this and have simply added a "you can't do that: go fornicate yourself" clause to the arbitration agreement.
Illegal in America... Especially now a days as USA Judges around Contract Law are skeptical with TOS.
I doubt most lawyers would be willing to do something like that. But mandatory arbitration can and has backfired. Since the company pays most of the costs (which they do because otherwise, the plaintiff might be able to argue they are unable to afford the cost of arbitration, and thereby be able to sue in court after all), if enough people take them to arbitration, they end up spending a ton on the costs. For examples, see what happened with Uber and DoorDash a few years ago.
Instead of one big lawsuit they can have tens of thousands of little ones. :)
Thank you for this, Seriously.
I am a privacy, and rights advocate, and I use discord not because I want to; its where everyone I know is.
I had no idea this was a thing, and I am glad I stumbled across your video.
I've just sent my email to them, and BCC'd myself to 2 different emails, a copy of it.
did your discord account get banned?
Well... looks like I'm a little late to the "opt-out" club.
Same lol
can't you just sue them anyway?
@@robocatssj3theofficial no, unless you're under an exception or the jurisdiction doesn't enforce arbitration agreements.
@@FastKnight401 You can absolutely sue them.
This is written in discords ToS, and those are not legally binding and have no legal grounds whatsoever. This is because consumer protection laws will tell you that ToS and EULA's are so long and often confusing that any given person is not expected to actually read all of it, let alone understand all of it, therefore this has no legal ground.
@@Z38_US from what I've read, arbitration agreements are generally enforced in the USA, though many countries don't enforce it.
ToS and EULA actually are legally binding, they're considered contracts. However, this means they have to follow contract law, so if you or the company resides in an area where arbitration agreements aren't enforced, then that term is void.
This is probably why it only applies to US residents.
In France it's illegal if I remember correctly: you can not use a clause of attribution towards citizens. You can only against other companies.
Great, but Discord is based in San Francisco this is very legal.
@@2rx_bniit's still illegal in the EU
@@2rx_bni they cant since its based on where the person is from rather than where discord is based so if they somehow do that to somebody outside of the US they can be sued because of it
Yeah but people from France and other countries can still sue discord
TOS says: "IF YOU’RE A U.S. RESIDENT, YOU ALSO AGREE TO THE FOLLOWING MANDATORY ARBITRATION PROVISIONS" so if you don't live in the US, you are subject to different laws
I am not a US resident, cry Discord.
Doesn't matter, it can eventually apply to you. Just keep yourself updated with the terms of service to see if it changed to apply to your country.
@@capnryna would make it illegal if that country doesnt allow it
@@WojtekPlay Obviously, you'll have to look at your countries' take on arbitration
I still sent the email.
@@capnryna Yeah, for example, I live in a country where arbitration clauses are illegal (as far as I know), but I'm still going to send the email in case I move to the US sometime in my life while that is still in effect.
They should make it so if a company has a “you can’t sue me” clause in their TOS then the customer should be able to say “you can’t sue me either” lmao
Tbf it's basically a "we can't sue each other" clause
I mean if you ready the TOS.. they can only arbitrate against you as well
That’s what it says pretty much.
It’s just that you’d honestly have better chances of winning if discord attempts to sue you than if they try to “arbitrate” with you.
i mean... you'd have to do something really harmful to discord's bottom line for them to want to sue you. The random discord user is probably not going to be able to do anything like that lol
@@prodbywarpipe
The funny thing about Discord... I have millions of throw away accounts. Which one should I use? I wonder.
Oh... Their Contract doesn't apply to me. I simply never existed, that's all.
Pull a class action lawsuit against the judges that side with the company 97% of the time because that is literally an unbalanced legal system that has probably resulted in millions of dollars of unpaid damages to parties who are most definitely unfairly judged to not get the payouts they deserve.
Joining the group of people frustrated with the fact this was hidden from us and missed the opt-out date.
i have sent a request to be opted out twice, both time were ignored and no reply, discord is going to end up with a massive lawsuit eventually im calling it
You won't get a reply. There's no confirmation email, just have to send it.
They can not legally ignore it so if I were you I’d continue to send it and document wether they do it or not as you could be the reason they could get sued
3 letters for you: *B. C. C.*
Start sending YOURSELF blind carbon copies so that you can document it in court if need be. You can sue the fucking shit out of them if they claim that you never requested an opt-out, since you have the proof that you sent in that request in the BLIND CARBON COPY that THEY cannot see.
@@SupaGamersAlt YEAHHH, BCC. MAKE SURE TO BCC YOURSELF.
@@rnaodmsomething I'm not even joking. It's legitimately something that people use in WORK environments to save their own asses.
This isn't just Discord. This is all US tech companies right now.
is that 10 karma from rain world
@@fredrick119 I can dive into the void and there's no forced arbitration down there!
eventually one of them will get too overzealous and do something as bad as blatent ID theft of their users and try to hide behind forced arbitration before arbitration gets outlawed
@@Diddz Hmm kinda reminds me of "If everything is X, no one is", what I means if all comanies ToS has arbitration and "can't sue us" clause, court would just throw those out the window.
@@Diddz there's apparently some law in works in congress that would let you sue a company directly for privacy violations. I was unfortunately not tipped off on what name it was. And I'm certain the lobbying force against it is massive.
Luckily, we have the GDPR, in which the EU just says "Nope, I don't care if you're in the US only, you have EU data subjects so here's a fine of up to 4% of your gross global earnings"
This is why I love being a citizen of a European Union member state. Truly couldn't be more proud.
That's why Discord has its ToS only apply to the US.
@@witherschat Their ToS applies to me as an EU citizen as much as it does to you. If I harass someone on Discord, I am in breach of their ToS. However, this specific clause only applies to American residents because they wouldn't legally be able to uphold it in the rest of the world. Arbitration exists in the rest of the world, but it's usually a precursor to a lawsuit - you can't just waive your right to sue - it doesn't work that way elsewhere.
@@Henoik That’s what I meant, thanks for wording it better than me.
average eu W
I like the employee specific clause of yeah you cant sue us for harassment, abuse, wrongful termination, discrimination or retaliation. Really makes you wonder
I was initially getting discouraged because it felt as if you were inflating an explanation for runtime, but you actually covered all the bases really well. You researched the topic really well and did an incredible job of presenting the information, before telling us what to do to fix it. This video is exceptionally well done and I appreciate it a lot. Thank you.
US citizen here. thanks for posting a video regarding this. I take law classes and went over abuse of TOS and ironically still agree to BS like this. i just sent them the email and hopefully the honor the opt out.
Put an end to EULA and abuse of TOS!
Did you use your Discord name or your government name for the email?
@@godsmackvv11 either is fine as long as you get the userid and email correct, personally i did discord name
@@rekunan I did everything correct and still got bounced
My nervous dummass wrote the message wrong. At the end of the message where it should say "Discord provisions requiring arbitration"
But I wrote "Discord provisions arbitration" (without the word requiring smh)... Now I'm wondering if I should send a second email or leave that one as is smh...
I sent mine when they very first changed the arbitration. I have not gotten the written confirmation yet and its been like a week i think?
Can't wait for discord's legal team to piss themselves when they see the amount of arbitration opt-out requests that suddenly come flooding in over the next month or so thanks to this video.
Fr, I bet they're already Rollin in. 😅 Mine barreled thru luckily just fine because the toast wouldn't even fit through the door unfortunately.
It's most likely automated
@@RealDreadmaniadoesn't matter, it's still a statistic someone at discord will likely see and be keeping track of.
I first got wind of this back in late April, sent my letter as soon as I read the TOS update and verified its legitimacy. Sent April 19th. Yeah, They're more than likely *flooded*
@@RealDreadmaniaAnd tell me, who keeps track of said automated process, thus overseeing what it does and obtains?
arbitrate is the big mouth guy from Halo
wort wort wort
That’s arbiter
Real
Armpitter
i think his name was actually arsebiter
me forgetting and re-watching the day after its too late:
I'm so grateful to the youtube algorithm for pushing this video out to me on May 22. 💀
I have had 1 run-in with an arbitrator because a seller refused to properly refund me as I "damaged the product".
Somehow, the arbitrator was unable to understand how a tripod could possibly get some very slight dust on the feet (it couldn't have been from simply having stood on the floor, it must have been outside according to him).
My entire case hung in the balance of the overall intelligence of 1 person.
Since then, when I see arbitration requirements, I go "NAH FAM".
No they probably understood. They probably were ignorant instead as they are paid by the company to save them money & assume everyone is lying to them.
They probably weren't stupid. They probably knew exactly what they were doing and were trying to lose your case.
Arbitrators really aren't the best honestly their main job is purely to create an agreement
This is a reflection of a larger issue in the American legal system.
This forced arbitration clause is a part of so so many terms and conditions. AND it doesn't necessary hold up in court - people have created class action lawsuits DESPITE force arbitration being a part of terms and conditions!
There is some good news - forced arbitration in terms of service isn't iron-clan law.
USA has some legal precedent where agreeing to forced arbitrary in the terms and conditions isn't held up by the courts.
There have been class action lawsuits that happen DESPITE this forced arbitration clause. And there are lawyers that make their legal fees separate (and covered) separately so it isn't taken out of awarded money.
It depends on the court and the case, a lot of lawyers would probably tell you that you're screwed if you sign one of those. Also im not a lawyer so dont sue pls
In the land of the free!
how nice im in europe and not america lul
@@nexor7809cope
@@prodbywarpipe You don't sign TOS's and EULA's. Which is why these things don't hold up in courts.
As a Swedish student in law school, i am now certain that i can sue them for saving my messages and not deleting them after i delete my account.
Edit: Woaaahhhh. Chill yall i'm 16. Yall would have to wait at least 4 years til i can file a lawsuit. And that alone can take a month or two.
Count me in if you ever do.
You can but it would end up being a fight of who runs out of money first most likely so if Discord really doesn't delete those messages after deleting your account, it's better to contact DPA and hope they pick it up and forward it to the right bodies in EU that handle GDPR violations which this would be.
@@touma-san91 Would much rather waste all my money and be on the news than that.
I like having my messages saved…
@@oracle372 I believe it's more that you should choose to have them saved after deleting your account rather than the saving in general but I'm not a legal student/lawyer so don't quote me on it
I am fairly good at reading up on the discord terms and services but mostly when it comes to user violations as I mod for multiple servers, before this I had 0 clue as to what arbitration was or the fact that I agreed to it lol. Thanks once again for the insightful video!
Thanks for showing me this video on time youtube and not showing me it weeks late.
same
It's insane to have a clause that says "btw you can't sue me" like dude! It shouldn't be for you to decide, it's for the judge
technically this is exactly what waivers are, except waivers only cover so much, and one still can sue in cases of negligence
(as far as I know, I'm not exactly studying law)
@@rydergolde3169
*GROSS negligence
Regular negligence is included in waivers like:
> Whoops, did my workers fit that bolt in the [thing]? It's in the safety manual [issued by my company]....
THIS is Gross negligence:
> Eh I don't have the budget to print safety manuals gonna do it if Q1 profits are good [unable to maintain safety standards]
OR
> Oh whoops I was partying last night and completely forgot to order new bolts so my workers have to put ones with cracks in them [preventable compromise of safety standards]
OR
Meh glue and tape should work just fine [bruh]
@@dipanwitamandal7289 ahhh
tbh i probably knew or felt there was *some* kind of difference when i wrote this
but not only do i not remember, my brain is full of fog rn lmao
either way, thanks for the clarification
@@rydergolde3169 btw those "examples" were a jab at Boeing.
"Taking away the rights to sue them". I'm sure there's certain situations where this is automatically invalid, depending on the subject in court
no if you agreed to it on paper you legally binded yourself to their rules
@@whimsicalchronicles8798 No. No matter what you sign, you cannot sign away your rights and there are situations which can invalidate this.
Nnnnope! If you agreed to Arbitration, you waive your rights to sue! You have to go through Arbitration only.
@@helpfulDeathgod In which cases is an arbitration agreement considered to be invalid?
An arbitration agreement shall be invalid in the following circumstances:
Disputes that arise in a field beyond the jurisdiction of the arbitration institution;
The parties to the arbitration agreement do not have competence in accordance with the law;
The parties to the arbitration agreement do not have civil capacity to act in accordance with the Civil Code;
The form of the arbitration agreement is not in compliance with Article 16 of the 2010 Law on Commercial Arbitration;
A party is deceived, intimidated, or coerced during the execution of the arbitration agreement and requests a declaration that such arbitration agreement is invalid; and
The arbitration agreement violates prohibitions specified by the law.
@@justinwyllie3359 that second to last bit, "A party is deceived...." , i'm assuming that "during the execution of the arbitration agreement". does this include the default opt-in being buried in a lengthy and technically dense terms of service? it doesn't say during the execution of the arbitration, but dueing the execution of the *arbitration agreement* which would be the signing or agreeing to the TOS, wouldn't it?
that would make it invalid from the beginning.
you could also argue that this was done in bad faith, since it's reasonable to assume that the average person isn't going to read the entire TOS for discord, or that they would understand the section dealing with disputes.
TOS doesn't overrule law. If they said you have to pay them a billion dollars in the TOS it doesn't mean you actually have to do it.
Forced arbitration is legal in US, you should research it
It’s mostly us because their law system sucks where the law has no value if it can be overwritten by a dumb tos.
if that was the case we would definitely have a lot of bs scam products having "user agrees to pay us 100 billion bazillion dollars" in their TOS by now
@@uguraktas8018 Forced arbitration is legal, but you can't have your right to redress taken away by a contract. Arbitration is just a step taken on the path to a lawsuit. A step that Discord has to pay for in full.
@@Xahnel I'm far from knowledgeable in this kind of thing, so hypothetically what channels would one have to go through for this redress?
(I'm not planning anything except for getting educated)
Should be pointed out that people do not even need to read terms of services from a legal standpoint.
By definition they're all unconscionable contracts, which means they absolutely cannot hold up to legal scrutiny.
Since you're unlikely to know what unconscionable contract means, it's a contract so heavily weighed to one side of the agreement that it is not considered legally binding. If Discord causes you financial harm due to their action or wilful inaction, you have every single right to sue them regardless of the place of your residence or whatever reads in their TOS or EULA.
It's weird that there is a concept in the US that it's possible for a contract to lessen your rights? Because in any normal country if you can sue you can sue and no contract can take away that right for you, even if it's repeated 100 times there.
Afaik It only applies to civil lawsuits. If you were to sue criminally no problem afaik ianal
The fact that I can just hide this clause in a terms of service and for it to be fully allowed is surprising. I have never seen this before, and I'm probably ignorant to the countless other platforms that have this same clause.
Are you new to the internet? Most of them.
Whether it's enforceable largely depends on where you live. There's a reason this clause only applies to people in the US.
@@karmawsyd213 it wouldn't apply to german users for example, something such as the arbitration clause would be very blatantly infringing on your rights here and thus, despite it being a part of the ToS, it couldn't be upheld in any court. more likely than not discord would be fucking themselves over even more with such a clause over here. (take everything i say with a grain of salt, we only properly discussed digital ToS in a single lecture in uni and my memory is a little hazy, all i know is discord would be up shit's creek if they tried to pull a sketchy move like that here)
@@panzerfich mandatory arbitration clauses in TOS aren't allowed in the entirety of the EU which is why you don't see those targeted towards people in the EU. The reason they do it for people in the US is because it's perfectly legal there.
@@karmawsyd213 didn't know it was actually a EU law, thanks for clearing that up
Finally I understand why this is an issue, I feel like I've seen this dozens of times before now and the entirety of the explanation was "they force arbitration and that's bad."
Forced arbitration should be made illegal. The fact that these companies can do things that are borderline messed up just because of something your required to agree to upon signup is just messed up. I’m not targeting discord here, but look at many major apps that use forced arbitration, like Roblox as an example. Roblox has done a lot of messed up stuff but nobody can do anything about it because of their terms of service (I am aware about the 10 million dollar court case).
Yea, "You can only use this service if you never sue me" doesn't sound very enforceable in court.
I mean it is still a choice to use their service? We don't have a gun to our heads and are forced to use it.
Arbitration clauses are practically useless in court.
@@iflax7460 "It's your choice to use their service" isn't going to work when monopolies crop up or there's otherwise a dependence on a certain service with no other reasonable options to continue your day to day activities or business.
@@iflax7460 You should learn about a concept called manufactured consent.
gotta love how the youtube algorithm didnt push this video until well over a month after the deadline and its already too late to opt out... thaaannnks
Thanks for letting me know about this, gonna go post it everywhere I can
Hey, with arbitration, In US law you can appeal by just suing the arbitrator. Specifically, the Federal Arbitration Act establishes that you can appeal arbitration decisions by petitioning a court.
Good luck paying for legal fees though.
@@Calvin_Coolageyou could always apply legal fees to the opposing party.
mate, I was aware of forced arbitration from Loius Rossman's videos, but watched this one through. But I'm dropping a comment to say that it really just hit me how great your videos are. You explain things so concise, to the point, easy to digest (forgot to mention: entertainining). You may focus on discord but I feel like if you made videos like this on anything I'd watch haha. Keep it up man love your videos.
Discord does train AI on your data. They have two patents for it. They acquired a subsidiary company called Sentropy, inc. It is literally an AI startup to combat hate speech on the internet.
and i'm gonna guess 'hate speech' means 'someone calling their friend a poopyhead'
How do we know they won't abuse the "hate speech" term?
@@RaceBandit If you read the patents, it dynamically tags users based on all of their conversations. Not just hate. Anything you’re interested in, any messages in servers (and DMs aswell), any spaces or connections you have a presence in, any friends, it all contributes to your AI tags in their system. This isn’t just bad things either. It also tags people with good things if that’s what its judgement is. Point being, Discord has a way to categorise, track and profile every user according to their interests.
@@jejxkxkso a social credit score computer. That won’t go poorly…
combat hate speech = only speech i like will be whitelisted lol
This info word have been vastly more IMPORTANT if I had seen it BEFORE the DEADLINE, TO OPT OUT of Arbitration instead of 2 months after the deadline cut off.😭
Of course the algorithm only shows me this long after the date I can opt out. Thanks youtube!
You can also choose to arbitrate even if you've opted out. All you're doing is giving yourself more options.
Discord has a net worth of 14 billion, a 50 million dollar lawsuit would be less than half of one percent... that's not a good punishment, it just tells them they can afford to keep doing whatever it is they'd be sued for
punish discord too much they just slap on a subscription fee on everyone and make us pay for it. No thanks, keep discord free to use.
putting stuff like that in your TOS is just sketchy
true + W comment
fyi: this guy probably scammed people or bought a scammers account to get that checkmark, he has 1 video from 3 days ago with only 200 views yet has over 100,000 subs
@@ProbablyCrispyBacon you sound actually deranged. That just happens sometimes.
@@ProbablyCrispyBacon so?
@@ProbablyCrispyBacon i was wondering lmao
Hi, I am personally involved in class action lawsuit before. Few years back there was a case where the big banks in Australia was being sued for overcharging fees. Basically what happens is that a law firm will just start suing on your behalf, you can opt out but no reason to.
Since there are often many plaintiff's payout isn't huge, I got like $550 or so. I think there are some underlying issues with discord that is waiting to blow up, that's why they changed the tos.
Unlikely it will bankrupt discord but $500 is $500.
Oh boy do I sure love to find this very vital piece of information nearly a month past the opt out deadline.
Yeah same, I'm considering deleting my discord and making a new one...
I literally NEVER saw any articles or anything
I had no idea
This man is doing the lords work
Somebody has to. He's been sitting on his ass for _ages._
I'm not a lawyer, but I doubt that a lot of forced arbitration is legally enforcable. Contracts aren't some magic "you've signed your soul away", if something is legally unjustifiable, that part of the contract is null and void.
The real issue is the law enforcement loophole. Lawsuits are doubly costly for citizens, because they need to dedicate precious time to it and there are legal fees on top of that.
they do have some legal enforceability but if it was something major like discord is found to be harboring a ton of CP or something well that falls flat very quickly, if its a major personal data leak of millions of users it might protect some people but ultimately they will lose if ithey're found to be at fault for the leak or something along the lines and if not well the government will step in and sue them anyways..
However whenever that happens its not like the consumers are getting any funds it all goes to lawyers..
I feel like things like this could be easily argued in court as them hiding this agreement to arbitration under a lot of legal text as well as not providing clear ways to opt in or out, thus making the agreement void, but I'm not a lawyer and I don't know shit
(this doesnt affect me specifically cuz i am in the EU, but it might affect others)
IMHO I did **NOT** agree to Discord's TOS, and I'm betting that you didn't either.
Sure, i clicked the checkbox that says that "I agree to the TOS", BUT
1. I have never actually read it in its entirely
2. I didn't actually sign it (ike with a signature)
3. I had no intent to actually agree with it.
4. I only clicked the check box so the app let me complete the account creation process, and for no other purpose.
@@Xnoob545 digital signature nowadays is clicking the box where it says you read the ToS and accept them. That's the only way to use apps and their services, so you consent to whatever is written. Just because it's not a physical signature doesn't mean that it's invalid
@@Xnoob545 by clicking on that button you agreed to the entire terms and conditions..
i don't think it's really a problem for users outside the us
Unfortunately thats not how it works. It can be under 300 paragraphs of legal text, but at the end of the day the user is responsible for reading and understanding the entire thing. In the EU you are informed of every change to the ToS of a service. Some people call it "EULA roofying" where the user is mislead as much as possible and in practice forced to accept an extremely disadvantageous EULA/ToS just to get a product or a service.
@@terrycrews1584 Ah, good old Louis Rossman lingo. I recommend him as he covers a lot of topics involving costumer rights.
Recently, I just learned the definition of the word discord, and it is the most fitting name for the platform.
discord
noun
lack of concord or harmony between persons or things:
Literally never heard of you, or this, you now have a new sub. Bless you!
I can't believe discord used their TOS to make sure you have to do arbitrary code execution to sue them😒
*sigh* Time to start Super Mario World...
@@PixyEm you’re badass for getting that reference dude
I thought that was a general reference to any kind of ACE speedrun, such as Ocarina of Time Any%.
Good ol ACE. I'm gonna run both SMW and OOT with ACE. No way they could stop that!
yeah, I thought it was general ACE, but in this case It would prolly be RCE
3:48 this example, while obviously not a 1 to 1 example of every situation, is honestly, for me, a very very good way of explaining what could happen!👍 and I mean that!
Holy smokes! Thank you so much for this video, and getting the word out there! I'm going to spread the word to all my discord homies!
Companies putting "you cant sue us" in their TOS/EULA shouldn't even be allowed, companies should always be open to be sued to keep them in check, so they wont do dumb sh*t in the future
When i got asked to agree to the new terms mid April, i had a feeling forced arbitration would be in there and of course when i scrolled down it was. I would have warned more people at the time but i didnt know if people cared that much about it. i guess they only realized they cared when big youtubers talked about it.
It would have been better if this video came out earlier, as this is a time sensitive issue. Maybe as a result of these videos people will look out for arbitration clauses in any new terms they come across, because this is super common now. At least discord had the slightest mercy to set up an email for opt outs; other companies make it so much less convenient
No way this is enforceable. I get the feeling if you went to a lawyer and asked to sue discord they'd say something akin to "they can't sign away your right to the law." in relation to the arbitration clauses. These things most of the time is to get people to not try in the first place, or guide them to do things in a way where they achieve nothing.
I didn't even know about this nor have i thought about suing Discord. However, this'll be something to have in the back of my head lmfao
Moral of the story: our legal system sucks
actual moral of the story - our legal system is basically non-existent.
ACTUAL MORAL OF THE STORY: Jews.
shut up your wrong in a ideal system there would be no forced law and everything would settled by agreements this is why anarco capitalism is the best posible system and sadly the current bogus US copratism is the closest we will get to a true free market
One small footnote: If you live in San Francisco County, CA you can still pursue them in small claims court according to their "Exceptions" section. There are also a handful of other exceptions concerning certain types of disputes like copyright, moral rights, and "unauthorized use of services" but that last one does leave a bit of an open question.
Glad this came across my feed, thank you for spreading the info and keep those who will do something informed. Don't plan on suing discord, but... you never know.
Just writing to say you really did manage to make the video very entertaining. I'm in EU and it was both fun and educational (even when it only applies to US). You are doing an awesome job!
I was wondering when NTTS was gonna do a video on this. People have been talking about it everywhere, so I figured the Discord RUclipsr would've been joined that party early 😛But it does make sense to take a bit so he can get all the information together to not only explain the main thing, but give plenty of context that most others did not. I might've eventually gone ahead and opted out myself after doing a bit of personal research. I just really wanted to hear it from someone who's reputation I know of like NTTS to hear that context, and you can bet I've opted out now.
"You cannot sue us, for any rhyme, rhythm, or reason. Don't try it. You'll be gone faster than you can say 'Whistleblower'."
This is garbage.
The fact that putting forced arbitration in the terms of service is even legal is absolutely mental
shut up your wrong in a ideal system there would be no forced law and everything would settled by agreements this is why anarco capitalism is the best posible system and sadly the current bogus US copratism is the closest we will get to a true free market
Thank you for making this, I definitely would not know to do this without your help.
Do I get an email back confirming I've opted out or am I just gonna have to hope that they've done so?
Make sure you have proof that you sent it; that may be the bare minimum afforded.
There's no way Discord's team will send back a statement acknowledging you're not falling for their games, because then they'd be made accountable if they DID try something with you. And if they ignored it or pretended you never sent it, you have the proof to say "not only have I got the proof, but I'll see you in court". Keep the receipt, scam the cheat.
@@206Zelda You right, you right
Do I have to go to court or anything if I opt out or do I send the email and thats it?
@@Demolisher1433-ci2jx Just send an email is what I'm guessing
@@Demolisher1433-ci2jx Send it. I don't think they'd want to do anything negative to you bc then you could sue for retaliation
Make sure to copy yourself on the email you send also so they know that you know they got it
Just for the record, class action lawsuits are actually kind of a crappy deal for individuals, because while the payouts can be very large the actual amount that each individual in the "class" gets is kind of piddley. You don't do a class action to get compensation, you do a class action to make a point.
RUclips recommending this to me on may 16th is crazy
I feel like TOS in apps you often wouldn't bother to read about should be presented differently and either have a summarized version for a quick-read, or a different way to know what you're getting into. Because honestly most people won't bother reading TOS on most of what they use online, compared to IRL things, like food, and other important stuff they might buy.
Always check to make sure you're not giving up info to some spambot, even if it comes from a source as such. This appears to check out and I appreciate No Text To Speech for sharing it.
I feel like if its such a hassle to opt out, this discord rule is just not going to be valid on a real court
This an incredibly common practice believe it or not, as somebody who actually reads TOSs and Privacy Policies I have seen this clause tens of times. Luckily, it doesn't hold up to well when to do so would require a company to fight international cyber laws,
Isnt that kind of stuff being in the TOS about as substantial as trucks with a “stay 200 ft back we are not responsible for broken windows” signs
when the trucks are, in fact, very much responsible for their cargo, and that sign means jack shit legally
@@LiaLia0407That's what they're saying. There's constantly stuff like this on contracts, partly to cover their ass, partly to scare people.
god this youtube algorithim didnt push this video to me until now. sucks that my only option is to delete my account now and make a new one in order to opt out, but im actually okay with that. i may have purchases i have made that im going to lose, but being forced into arbitration sounds way worse.
I love that we are legally bound to a document that they openly are aware people don't read and is intentionally written for laymen people not be able to read.
Have you read and agreed to all of your State's laws?
stuff like this is why I never pay cash to any companies for anything online, I'd rather trust the pirates tbh.
it all feels silly and useless, what with me somehow managing to convince each of my devices that I'm in a seperate country with zero use of vpn(no idea how I did that, mostly tech problems I purposefully avoided fixing), having each account seperate and generally unlinked for different groups of websites, randomly making burner accounts every time I visit a website with strange unique password fetishes, being blatantly honest with less personal information in a way that makes it seem like I'm making stuff up, which for example keeps real life friends from accidentally blowing my cover if they call me by my "nickname" ingame since I conveniently left out the part where it's my real name, or a part of it is anyways, probably, you don't know. ect.
my favorite idea was giving scammers random pun names so I can keep track of where scammers are getting their info from, like some random old lady calls me and asks if I'm her grandson and I tell her "no, this is brian freiz(brain freeze)" and next thing I know all the scammers are calling me bre-an frezno, then I get a call from some chick asking if I'm Rian and I say "wrong number, this is don tramble(don't ramble)" and next thing I know I'm getting 12 calls a day asking for "Don".
it really pays to be cautious. though I had to stop with the fake names when I realized that ANY response immediately marked you as an easy target, even just reading their text messages counted, and it was getting to the point where I had to mute my phone because it was just ringing every minute.
another fun thing though, I've had a lot of "hackers" and "scammers" try to scare or startle me by knowing my location, but whatever the deal is with my devices, it tricks them too XD
honestly you'd think knowing my phone number would be enough to let them know where I live, but I guess they just ignore that in favor of their fancy scary computer magic.
holy cheeseburgers how long is that
Wtf, may 15th, SERIOUSLY!!! IM 2 WEEKS TOO LATE.
Genuine question about sending the opt-out email, should I include my real name?
This probably sounds dumb but I just wanted to make sure that's what I'm supposed to do before sending it.
Yes, It's a legal Letter so it need your legal Name on it. When ,Out really sue Discord later on and they say you have agreed to forced abitration even If you sent thr opt Out Mail, they could rule that the opt Out Mail ist from a Person with your Discord Händler Name and Not from you.
So yes, use your legal Name.
@electricz3045 alright thank you! I thought so, but I just wanted to make sure.
@@electricz3045Do we have to put our last name too or just first name?
@@ChangedRaptor76I'm curious about this as well.
also, archive your email; you wouldn't want them to "lose" it
I immediately sent the email lol. this kind of stuff is scary, especially since they are making it so that you have a deadline
Thank you very much for sharing this information. I sent it to my server and opted out myself.
I don’t think you can truly opt out though. Discord doesn’t send you an email confirming that they received your opt out request so they can just lie and say they never got it
I think there is no point. It would just be an indicator to them that you are a trouble user.
While I would love to opt out, I’m not sure if this is also some sort of scam. There have been issues with the login QR code before, so I’ve heard. There is no telling.
If the problem is widespread enough, the company will get backlash, and people will go back to TeamSpeak.
No text to speech jinxed us 1:15
It would be pretty epic if The Department of Justice got involved on this.
Well I missed the period that I had no idea about, I'm joining that lawsuit if it ever happens
I doubt I'll ever need to sue Discord, but even I did this when I saw what was going on. Thanks bro.
Almost all or all companies, at least US companies had this clause in their term of services, like your Internet provider, phone service, etc...
Binah (비나, Bina) is the Patron Librarian of the Library's Floor of Philosophy, formerly the Sephirah of Lobotomy Corporation's Extraction Team, and a former Arbiter of the Head. She is met after promoting the Library to Star of the City and subsequently unlocking her floor.
Project moon mentioned, sleeper agents activate.
come on man at least delete the "starcityicon"
moon
project moon mentioned
You're a lifesaver. Liked, subscribed, followed your instructions to the T, ASAP.
Thank you so much!
Hey, thanks for bringing this to my attention. Had no idea before this video. I've passed it on to my family.
Before this video, I did indeed know about this change and had already opted out.
Thank you for covering this.