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 [email protected], 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:
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:
Your right to file a complaint in the court of law is removed.
The arbitration system tends to heavily favour the company rather than the consumer.
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.
Discord response on Reddit.
Edited to add our official response here:
https://blog.discordapp.com/terms-of-service-feedback-and-changes-c58a530c7693
-- Original Text Below --
Hey everyone - I just had a conversation in the DAPI server where this was posted, which was pretty good, but I'm going to put this here as well, to explain some of the reasoning behind this change. I want to generally say that this isn't a planned statement so it's a bit conversational in tone (edited for some clarity, apologies for the length):
First things first: We're pretty dedicated to things like user privacy, not selling your data, and trying to be make money in a not-being-big-brother-and-knowing-where-you-sleep way. So a lot of the questions in this thread are things like, what is this then? Why is it legal? What are you trying to do?
As with most things legal, this is to protect the company. Yes, you probably rolled your eyes at that, but bear with me while we go through a slightly long journey through the law.
In general, I think the American legal system is pretty great. It allows for Justice when someone wrongs you, and we have both criminal and civil courts that operate separately but share a lot of values. It's a pretty integral part of why America is awesome.
In the United States, in the 1960s, the modern class action lawsuit was born. The class action lawsuit was seen as a way to expedite a lot of really onerous legal processes, streamline the system, allow everyone to easily obtain justice, and it was really helpful for things like environmental rights and civil rights. It's still helpful, but the problem is that with a system like this, people have started to take advantage of the system.
I want to be clear that we're not doing this to dodge responsibility for anything. We believe in doing right by you, and we take feedback into account (see the recent Nitro Classic changes). The reason that there's a arbitration agreement in our Terms of Service is that there have been a continuously increasing raft of class actions and firms that look for companies that are susceptible to class actions. When class actions are successful, the lawyers get millions, and each user gets, on average... anywhere from ten cents to a couple dollars. Sometimes tens of dollars! Maybe a free rideshare (I don't remember this case, but I think I got one of these recently).
I genuinely believe that if we messed up, we would do more for you than give you ten cents (and some law firm X million dollars). There's a bunch of articles online, if you search 'frivolous class actions', you'll find some of them. But instead of taking my word for it (sorry, reading rainbow reference), I'd actually suggest you follow someone that I think fights for user rights always, Mike Masnick of Techdirt: "For years, we've been pointing out that our class action lawsuit system is broken. It makes sense, in theory, that if a large group of people are wronged, they can team up to right that wrong—but in practice it has morphed into a system where a bunch of bottom-feeder lawyers sue just about any company at every opportunity... and then those lawyers end up taking the bulk of the money." - https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...ts-are-mostly-about-making-lawyers-rich.shtml
Law firms file class actions over pokemon go’s teenagers knocking on doors (yup). Law firms file class actions over really, really dumb stuff (https://www.forbes.com/sites/wlf/20...nt-in-california-encourages-frivolous-claims/) ... and they get rich off of it. This is not to say that all class actions are inherently bad - but the way they're used today is really damaging to companies who are trying to do the right thing. If they changed the barrier for class action lawsuits and made it less about enriching lawyers looking for money and more about fixing things, we wouldn’t be here. And, in fact, part of the post notes that arbitration clauses aren't enforceable in some countries - countries that don’t have the same culture don't have this issue. And yet, they still hold companies accountable - European DPAs fight for users, and we believe in that fight. Here in the US, the FTC fights for users, and we believe in them too (and think they do a pretty good job holding companies responsible).
Again, not all class actions are in bad faith. But a lot of them are, and they cost a lot of money to defend against, money that could be better spent on pushing new updates and getting better games that you can play. At the end of the day, what we want to do is make Discord the best place for games and gamers (and along the way, keep churning out a million memes, keep updating the client every day), and not spend money on lawsuits that aren't actually benefiting the users.
Final note - this isn't to persuade you not to opt-out. Reasonable people can disagree on whether or not arbitration is good, or whether or not the class action system is one that is beneficial. If you want to opt-out, you absolutely should, and you can send us one of the several templates in this thread. You won't be penalized in any way if you do so - you're exercising a right that you absolutely have the right to exercise.
Here's an email template (it's best if you send the email from the same email that your account is associated with); Please send the email to [email protected].
To whom it may concern,
As stated in the Discord Terms of Service,
You have the right to opt out and not be bound by the provisions requiring arbitration by sending written notice of your decision to opt out to Discord by email to [email protected]. The notice must be sent within 30 days of this Terms of Service taking effect, or your account creation on the Service.
I hereby exercise the aforementioned right to opt out and not be bound by the provisions requiring arbitration. This email is a written notice of said decision. Please let me know immediately if there is additional information needed to implement my opt-out request.
Finally, I would like to ask for written confirmation that you have received and processed this notice.
[Your IRL Name]
[Your User ID (with #)]
[Email Associated With Account]
[(Optional) Phone Number)]
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 [email protected], 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:
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:
Your right to file a complaint in the court of law is removed.
The arbitration system tends to heavily favour the company rather than the consumer.
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.
Discord response on Reddit.
Edited to add our official response here:
https://blog.discordapp.com/terms-of-service-feedback-and-changes-c58a530c7693
-- Original Text Below --
Hey everyone - I just had a conversation in the DAPI server where this was posted, which was pretty good, but I'm going to put this here as well, to explain some of the reasoning behind this change. I want to generally say that this isn't a planned statement so it's a bit conversational in tone (edited for some clarity, apologies for the length):
First things first: We're pretty dedicated to things like user privacy, not selling your data, and trying to be make money in a not-being-big-brother-and-knowing-where-you-sleep way. So a lot of the questions in this thread are things like, what is this then? Why is it legal? What are you trying to do?
As with most things legal, this is to protect the company. Yes, you probably rolled your eyes at that, but bear with me while we go through a slightly long journey through the law.
In general, I think the American legal system is pretty great. It allows for Justice when someone wrongs you, and we have both criminal and civil courts that operate separately but share a lot of values. It's a pretty integral part of why America is awesome.
In the United States, in the 1960s, the modern class action lawsuit was born. The class action lawsuit was seen as a way to expedite a lot of really onerous legal processes, streamline the system, allow everyone to easily obtain justice, and it was really helpful for things like environmental rights and civil rights. It's still helpful, but the problem is that with a system like this, people have started to take advantage of the system.
I want to be clear that we're not doing this to dodge responsibility for anything. We believe in doing right by you, and we take feedback into account (see the recent Nitro Classic changes). The reason that there's a arbitration agreement in our Terms of Service is that there have been a continuously increasing raft of class actions and firms that look for companies that are susceptible to class actions. When class actions are successful, the lawyers get millions, and each user gets, on average... anywhere from ten cents to a couple dollars. Sometimes tens of dollars! Maybe a free rideshare (I don't remember this case, but I think I got one of these recently).
I genuinely believe that if we messed up, we would do more for you than give you ten cents (and some law firm X million dollars). There's a bunch of articles online, if you search 'frivolous class actions', you'll find some of them. But instead of taking my word for it (sorry, reading rainbow reference), I'd actually suggest you follow someone that I think fights for user rights always, Mike Masnick of Techdirt: "For years, we've been pointing out that our class action lawsuit system is broken. It makes sense, in theory, that if a large group of people are wronged, they can team up to right that wrong—but in practice it has morphed into a system where a bunch of bottom-feeder lawyers sue just about any company at every opportunity... and then those lawyers end up taking the bulk of the money." - https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...ts-are-mostly-about-making-lawyers-rich.shtml
Law firms file class actions over pokemon go’s teenagers knocking on doors (yup). Law firms file class actions over really, really dumb stuff (https://www.forbes.com/sites/wlf/20...nt-in-california-encourages-frivolous-claims/) ... and they get rich off of it. This is not to say that all class actions are inherently bad - but the way they're used today is really damaging to companies who are trying to do the right thing. If they changed the barrier for class action lawsuits and made it less about enriching lawyers looking for money and more about fixing things, we wouldn’t be here. And, in fact, part of the post notes that arbitration clauses aren't enforceable in some countries - countries that don’t have the same culture don't have this issue. And yet, they still hold companies accountable - European DPAs fight for users, and we believe in that fight. Here in the US, the FTC fights for users, and we believe in them too (and think they do a pretty good job holding companies responsible).
Again, not all class actions are in bad faith. But a lot of them are, and they cost a lot of money to defend against, money that could be better spent on pushing new updates and getting better games that you can play. At the end of the day, what we want to do is make Discord the best place for games and gamers (and along the way, keep churning out a million memes, keep updating the client every day), and not spend money on lawsuits that aren't actually benefiting the users.
Final note - this isn't to persuade you not to opt-out. Reasonable people can disagree on whether or not arbitration is good, or whether or not the class action system is one that is beneficial. If you want to opt-out, you absolutely should, and you can send us one of the several templates in this thread. You won't be penalized in any way if you do so - you're exercising a right that you absolutely have the right to exercise.
Here's an email template (it's best if you send the email from the same email that your account is associated with); Please send the email to [email protected].
To whom it may concern,
As stated in the Discord Terms of Service,
You have the right to opt out and not be bound by the provisions requiring arbitration by sending written notice of your decision to opt out to Discord by email to [email protected]. The notice must be sent within 30 days of this Terms of Service taking effect, or your account creation on the Service.
I hereby exercise the aforementioned right to opt out and not be bound by the provisions requiring arbitration. This email is a written notice of said decision. Please let me know immediately if there is additional information needed to implement my opt-out request.
Finally, I would like to ask for written confirmation that you have received and processed this notice.
[Your IRL Name]
[Your User ID (with #)]
[Email Associated With Account]
[(Optional) Phone Number)]
Last edited:
Banned forever. Reason: Rules violations
