cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/17618684
Forced arbitration means any legal disputes you may have with Discord must be resolved through a single third party mediator, who 99% of the time is chosen by, and will rule in favor of, the corporation/Discord. This effectively removes all your legal rights as a consumer, because arbitration decisions are legally binding and non-appealable.
The new ToS goes into effect April 15th, 2024.
YOU CAN OPT OUT OF ARBITRATION. You must email [email protected] BEFORE MAY 15TH (30 days after ToS effective date) with your username stating that you wish to opt out of the arbitration clause. Once May 15th passes you are bound to arbitration with Discord forever.
Opt-out before it’s too late.
In short, I don’t write formal documents often in my role as a software engineer.
There are any number of ways that an opt-out message could be too ambiguous to be legally interpreted. For example, if you just send the message saying “no thanks, I don’t want to use arbitration”, but forget to identify yourself in a way that is meaningful to the other party, it may not hold up in any proceedings.
For example, either your legal name or username may be required, or both, depending on whether you need to prove you are/were a user at the time of opt-out.
Specifying the confirmation is helpful as well in a normal document that someone reads.
Several other companies have made opt outs that you have to send paper mail for as a way to raise the barrier of rejection.
People are lazy. I am lazy. I asked a resource to do it for me and shared the results to help others like me. This helps reduce the barrier to people who would like to opt out but can’t be bothered to figure out how to write that email.