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: https://gist.github.com/Rapptz/c93697c9d59ec2f0d8071b7d0e907632
I will attempt to answer some common questions.
Is this enforceable?
In the United States, yes. This was decided by the Supreme Court in 2011. See https://gc.gy/7538114
In Europe, no. There are many clauses, a relevant one is Article 77 of the GDPR ("Right to lodge a complaint with a supervisory authority").
Why does this matter?
Without the ability to congregate for a class action lawsuit, if Discord ever leaks your data or does something catastrophically bad to a large portion of the population you have no way to representatively sue together without each of you individually suing via the arbitrator.
Please see the following article: https://gc.gy/7538130
Essentially:
1. Your right to file a complaint in the court of law is removed.
2. The arbitration system tends to heavily favour the company rather than the consumer.
3. Since your right to pool similar complaints together is taken away, the amount of damage you can do to a company that has wronged you significantly is limited to those who are willing to arbitrate.
Why should I care? Other companies do it too!
By learning about this I hope that you will be more conscious about these arbitration clauses and how anti-consumer they are. You can't change the past, but you surely can't predict the future either.
