Discord’s updated Terms of Service are exactly the wrong response to the recent data breaches

It seems like Discord has been in the news lately for some reason, ranging from layoffs to massive breaches of privacy and information theft by third parties. And now there’s something new on the horizon – an issue that may not seem like a big deal now, but could cause huge problems for Discord users later.

Discord recently released its forced arbitration clause in the Terms of Service for its services to US residents, a decision that follows many other companies that operate primarily in the US. Under the clause, all users residing in the US waive their right to a jury trial, including any class action lawsuits:

But why would Discord update the TOS now?

The answer likely lies in the other issues Discord has been facing lately, regarding the service’s collected information and chats. Recently, a publicly accessible website was discovered that collects billions of Discord chats and will sell this data to the highest bidder. And in January 2024, Discord bots were found to have been used in campaigns to steal information. There’s also the fact that Discord, per its own policies, itself has full permission to create data profiles about users and sell them to third parties at its discretion.

Discord is doing its users a disservice with its updated TOS

Discord responded that it is investigating these breaches, but that they have been going on for years, at least since 2020. And instead of fully investing in addressing them and properly securing user data, the service decides to ensure that US users cannot exercise their right to a jury trial. Forced arbitration takes away users’ collective legal rights, allowing companies to exercise their full legal power against mere individuals with much less power.

This essentially means that Discord has chosen to protect itself rather than its US user base. It allows bad actors to run rampant across the service and then denies those same users the right to collectively demand responsibility for the repeated stealing and selling of their private data. You could even argue that this is a preparation to allow Discord to expand its own data collection with impunity, since users in the US would also have little legal recourse to challenge that.

If that’s not a huge alarm bell for what’s going to happen in the future, then nothing else exists.

What you can do about it

However, there is an important step you can take now to make it clear that you are not waiving your right to a jury trial. According to the Terms of Service, you can opt out of this forced arbitration clause by “emailing an opt-out notice to arbitration-opt-out@discord.com within 30 days of April 15, 2024 or when you first register your Discord account, depending on what’s later.” Twitter/X-user @guldeuxchats has provided an excellent template that you can use to write your email.

You can also get your Discord user ID number by enabling developer mode in the Discord settings and including that in your email. This is useful in case you ever change your username and need to permanently refer to your account for your records.

If enough people in the US opt out of this clause before the deadline and spread this information, it could send a message to Discord to sort out its priorities and protect its user base – the same user base that helped drive its growth of this. service first.

It’s not like this is Discord’s first time forced to walk back also huge privacy problems. The service previously ran into trouble when it removed entire sentences from its privacy policy, which explicitly protected users from data-seeking voice and video chats. But thanks to sufficient public resistance, those protections were restored. Now it’s time to do it again.