this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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What is forced arbitration and why is it bad?
If a company does something bad, you can sue to fix it.
Suing sets legal precedent and forces all companies to abide by the ruling, more or less.
But now if a company tricks you out of your right to sue by putting arbitration clauses in everything, then you can't sue. You can only have a (hopefully) impartial third part tell the company to stop doing something specifically to you. The company is still free to keep doing the thing to everyone else, and their arbitration doesn't affect any other companies also doing bad things.
There are other issues too.
Most importantly, Discord pays the arbitrator.
https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/arbitration/what-is-arb.html
Essentially, arbitration waives your right to sue the company in any capacity and instead requires all legal disputes to be resolved by a 3rd party mediator hand picked by the company.
You can guess how often these arbitrators rule against the companies that pay them (Spoiler: it's not often)
It's used as a get-out-of-jail-free card for companies to basically have legal immunity from any kind of consequences, as all their customers must arbitrate and get told to suck eggs. Arbitration is legally binding and not appealable. It also conveniently keeps the corporate dirty laundry out of the court systems, because arbitration is private, confidential and closed-doors.
You can also watch one of Louis Rossmann's latest rants about ToS changes and arbitration being forced down users' throats suddenly without warning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AddtrV6UFFs
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=AddtrV6UFFs
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
ToS and the like are legal documents that people/customers 'sign' or agree to before using a service or product, usually agreed or signed AFTER a purchase has been made. Arbitration causes in these documents mean that you agree to not sue the company for any reason, like a class action lawsuit. Basically if you feel like you have been scammed or taken advantage of by that company, you cannot sue for damages. ToS are not the law though and can be superceded by legal means, like a lawsuit ironically. Correct me if I'm not 100% correct, as I'm not a lawyer and this is just my understanding of this.