#arbitral

[euuzaik]

OPT OUT OF DISCORD'S NEW ARBITRATION CLAUSE

I'm sure many people in the U.S. have seen discord's new terms of service thing pop up today, April 15th 2024, but haven't actually read it. this is an update to make it so you can't sue them or participate in any class actions against them. these kinds of agreements should be illegal and stuff but they aren't so here we are. there's no easy button to click that says opt out. to opt out you have to email their arbitration opt-out email, arbitration-opt-out@discord.com, with the following subject and message:

subject: Opt-out notice

body:

I, (your legal name), decline the agreement to arbitrate in Discord's Terms of Service updated March 15, 2024 for any and all accounts I have or use, past and present, and those that I create, have, or use in the future, regardless of their association with this email.

Please acknowledge your receipt of this opt-out notice in writing by replying to this email.

(your legal name)

[spacedace]

Forced Arbitration Added to Discord's Terms

First up: forced arbitration is effectively a legal way (in the Unites States) for a company to stop you from suing them. It means if anything happens that is sue-worthy (say they massively fucked up and people's data got stolen en masse), you would not be allowed to sue them.

Instead you'd be forced into a process called arbitration which is private (you wouldn't be allowed to speak on what was going on publicly) removed from the courts and handled by arbiters who were selected by and beholden to the company that did the shady/illegal thing (Discord, in this case) so your odds of getting anywhere are basically zero.

The good news:

You can opt out of this bullshit pretty easily. You just need to send an email clearly stating that you are opting out from the email address associated with your discord account.

Unfortunately, you only have 30 days from April 15, 2024 (or 30 days from your account's creation if you made a new one) to send this opt out email. So you're gonna wanna get on that pretty quick, even if you don't ever imagine you needing to sue Discord, having the option taken away from you is never a good thing.

The email you need to message is:

arbitration-opt-out@discord.com

Again you need to send from the email inbox associated with your discord account, you should also save the email after you send it so if you need to pull it out and wave it in someone's face later you have it handy.

The email doesn't need to be in depth or long, just something direct and simple like:

"I am writing to opt out if the arbitration clause added in their most recent update to their Terms of Service."

Remember, just because you don't think you'll need to does not mean it's okay for them to be shady and take the option away from you.

Go forth and be spiteful my dudes

[boag]

This is INSANEEE

[the-witchhunter]

I’ve had an interesting thought swimming around my head that I swear I’ve been meaning to write

You know what would be an interesting combination of characters?

Jazz and Harvey Dent/TwoFace

Specifically a Dent just getting back on his feet, released from Arkham and trying to learn how to exist in the world with his condition

I’m thinking a reveal gone wrong, Danny has disappeared to ancients know where, so Jazz cuts ties and Stays with her Uncle Dent, or maybe her bio dad if that’s more your game. Just an soaking wet and miserable Jazz showing up at his crappy apartment saying she’s his daughter or niece and him resisting the urge to flip a coin because he has enough on his plate as is, only to let her in telling her they’ll talk about it in the morning and point her to the shower so she can clean up and dry off

Why do I think this would be an interesting combo?

Jazz’s interest in psychology. A lot of times, as a fandom we depict her as an expert, and in a future timeline where she went to school and has been practicing psychology maybe, but default Jazz? She’s not an expert

Jazz wants to be a brain surgeon, psychology is an interest of hers but her understanding is very limited. She quotes Freud and Jung and has some amount of academic knowledge of the field, but she clearly doesn’t understand that psychoanalyzing friends and family and offering unwanted psychiatric advice is actually rude and something she shouldn’t do. She lacks understanding of actual therapy and is clumsy in applying her knowledge to people she knows

And I find putting her in proximity of someone with DID and probably PTSD would really be an eye opening experience for her

Because Dent might humor her, TwoFace will call her out. They both have hung around Harley to know enough to tell her, “maybe don’t take Freud so seriously” because man does everything go back to sex with Freud, and maybe quoting a guy that says she wants to boink her dad is not as strong of a point as she thinks it is

And the thing is, Harvey would likely still be receiving therapy as an outpatient, potentially taking meds to help deal with his conditions, likely a mood stabilizer or anxiety med to manage PTSD symptoms, so she’s front seat of him learning to live as a regular person in Gotham with his condition. She’s gonna see his good days, his bad days, the side effects of his medication, and it’s going to change her idea of what psychology is. It’s not just quoting things at people, it’s not just saying “this is good for people” but she’d see what it being put into practice would look like

Maybe that’ll push her away from the subject. Maybe it’ll make her more inclined to study, to learn not just about it as an abstract but how to actually apply it to help people. Learning about actual therapy practices. Maybe living first hand with mental illness would be the push to switch from neurosurgery to clinical psychology in her future plans

Also I just think that Dent would be empathetic and do what he could to help her, meanwhile TwoFace would help her cut loose a little, get a little chaotic and have some fun

You can’t tell me there’s not something fun about her and “Uncle Two-y” having a night on the town that only results in a little property damage. Relax Harv, they didn’t do anything too illegal, because they didn’t get caught or nothing

[loveable-sea-lemon]

opt out before May 15, 2024 by emailing arbitration-opt-out@discord.com

email template from reddit:

"Dear Discord,

By this email, dated XXXXXX, I am opting out of the agreement to arbitrate as authorized by the new changes to the Discord Terms of Service Agreement.

I DO NOT AGREE TO THE AGREEMENT TO ARBITRATE FOR THE ACCOUNT(S) LISTED/DESCRIBED BELOW:

kelvinwop#6523

with email: XXXXXXXX@gmail.com

and SMS: 218-XXX-XXXX

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.

Sincerely,

XXXXXX XXXX"

[leahsfiction]

mustard red and the divine comma arbitrage are each other's right hand arm man/confidante/companion/silly rabbit etc

[odinsblog]

🗣️ Please pay attention

Amazon argues that national labor board is unconstitutional, joining SpaceX and Trader Joe’s

Amazon is arguing in a legal filing that the 88-year-old National Labor Relations Board is unconstitutional, echoing similar arguments made this year by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and the grocery store chain Trader Joe’s in disputes about workers’ rights and organizing.

The Amazon filing, made Thursday, came in response to a case before an administrative law judge overseeing a complaint from agency prosecutors who allege the company unlawfully retaliated against workers at a New York City warehouse who voted to unionize nearly two years ago.

In its filing, Amazon denies many of the charges and asks for the complaint to be dismissed. The company’s attorneys then go further, arguing that the structure of the agency — particularly limits on the removal of administrative law judges and five board members appointed by the president — violates the separation of powers and infringes on executive powers stipulated in the Constitution.

The attorneys also argue that NLRB proceedings deny the company a trial by a jury and violate its due-process rights under the Fifth Amendment. (source)

ICYMI, this is a case of corporations going, “7th Amendment Protections for me, but not for thee.”

It is strongly worth noting that in 2018 the John Roberts Court ruled 5-4 that companies can use forced arbitration clauses to stop people from joining together to fight workplace abuses - in effect denying individuals their 7th Amendment protections.

Subsequently, binding arbitration clauses used by corporations has proliferated; sneaking into all manner of common legal documents: personal banking applications, ordinary car loan applications, furniture purchases, and more. This is, unsurprisingly, a direct violation of the 7th Amendment that guarantees HUMAN BEINGS AND PEOPLE the right to a jury trial in certain civil cases and inhibits courts from overturning a jury's findings of fact. Republicans and SCOTUS are perfectly okay with corporations having more rights than workers and using forced arbitration to block people from having access to jury trials—but God forbid if corporations don’t have their right to a jury trial.

This legislative push to bestow corporations with more rights than people, while simultaneously taking away rights from human beings, has been nothing if not thoroughly and methodically done. At this rate, no corporation will ever need to fear a class action lawsuit again.

Amazon, SpaceX and Trader Joe’s are union busting.

But this latest case against the NLRB isn’t just an attack on labor and worker’s rights, it’s a fascistic attack on the very heart of fairness and democracy itself.

[thedesertpenguin]

What do you think the argument (and it was definitely an argument) was like in deciding who went as Mario and who went as Luigi? Like how did Mac secure Mario, why did Dennis agree to Luigi?

[yugiohcardsdaily]

Arbitration of White

"You can target 1 Fish monster you control; it is treated as a Tuner this turn. When an opponent's monster declares an attack: You can discard 1 Fish monster; change all monsters your opponent controls to Defense Position. If your Fish monster is destroyed by battle or sent to your GY: You can send this face-up card from your Spell & Trap Zone to the GY; Special Summon 1 Fish monster from your GY. You can only use each effect of 'Arbitration of White'."

[mostlysignssomeportents]

When Facebook came for your battery, feudal security failed

When George Hayward was working as a Facebook data-scientist, his bosses ordered him to run a “negative test,” updating Facebook Messenger to deliberately drain users’ batteries, in order to determine how power-hungry various parts of the apps were. Hayward refused, and Facebook fired him, and he sued:

https://nypost.com/2023/01/28/facebook-fires-worker-who-refused-to-do-negative-testing-awsuit/

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/05/battery-vampire/#drained

Hayward balked because he knew that among the 1.3 billion people who use Messenger, some would be placed in harm’s way if Facebook deliberately drained their batteries — physically stranded, unable to communicate with loved ones experiencing emergencies, or locked out of their identification, payment method, and all the other functions filled by mobile phones.

As Hayward told Kathianne Boniello at the New York Post, “Any data scientist worth his or her salt will know, ‘Don’t hurt people…’ I refused to do this test. It turns out if you tell your boss, ‘No, that’s illegal,’ it doesn’t go over very well.”

Negative testing is standard practice at Facebook, and Hayward was given a document called “How to run thoughtful negative tests” regarding which he said, “I have never seen a more horrible document in my career.”

We don’t know much else, because Hayward’s employment contract included a non-negotiable binding arbitration waiver, which means that he surrendered his right to seek legal redress from his former employer. Instead, his claim will be heard by an arbitrator — that is, a fake corporate judge who is paid by Facebook to decide if Facebook was wrong. Even if he finds in Hayward’s favor — something that arbitrators do far less frequently than real judges do — the judgment, and all the information that led up to it, will be confidential, meaning we won’t get to find out more:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/12/hot-coffee/#mcgeico

One significant element of this story is that the malicious code was inserted into Facebook’s app. Apps, we’re told, are more secure than real software. Under the “curated computing” model, you forfeit your right to decide what programs run on your devices, and the manufacturer keeps you safe. But in practice, apps are just software, only worse:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/23/peek-a-boo/#attack-helicopter-parenting

Apps are part what Bruce Schneier calls “feudal security.” In this model, we defend ourselves against the bandits who roam the internet by moving into a warlord’s fortress. So long as we do what the warlord tells us to do, his hired mercenaries will keep us safe from the bandits:

https://locusmag.com/2021/01/cory-doctorow-neofeudalism-and-the-digital-manor/

But in practice, the mercenaries aren’t all that good at their jobs. They let all kinds of badware into the fortress, like the “pig butchering” apps that snuck into the two major mobile app stores:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/02/pig-butchering-scam-apps-sneak-into-apples-app-store-and-google-play/

It’s not merely that the app stores’ masters make mistakes — it’s that when they screw up, we have no recourse. You can’t switch to an app store that pays closer attention, or that lets you install low-level software that monitors and overrides the apps you download.

Indeed, Apple’s Developer Agreement bans apps that violate other services’ terms of service, and they’ve blocked apps like OG App that block Facebook’s surveillance and other enshittification measures, siding with Facebook against Apple device owners who assert the right to control how they interact with the company:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/10/e2e/#the-censors-pen

When a company insists that you must be rendered helpless as a condition of protecting you, it sets itself up for ghastly failures. Apple’s decision to prevent every one of its Chinese users from overriding its decisions led inevitably and foreseeably to the Chinese government ordering Apple to spy on those users:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/11/foreseeable-consequences/#airdropped

Apple isn’t shy about thwarting Facebook’s business plans, but Apple uses that power selectively — they blocked Facebook from spying on Iphone users (yay!) and Apple covertly spied on its customers in exactly the same way as Facebook, for exactly the same purpose, and lied about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

The ultimately, irresolvable problem of Feudal Security is that the warlord’s mercenaries will protect you against anyone — except the warlord who pays them. When Apple or Google or Facebook decides to attack its users, the company’s security experts will bend their efforts to preventing those users from defending themselves, turning the fortress into a prison:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/20/benevolent-dictators/#felony-contempt-of-business-model

Feudal security leaves us at the mercy of giant corporations — fallible and just as vulnerable to temptation as any of us. Both binding arbitration and feudal security assume that the benevolent dictator will always be benevolent, and never make a mistake. Time and again, these assumptions are proven to be nonsense.

Image: Anthony Quintano (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mark_Zuckerberg_F8_2018_Keynote_%2841118890174%29.jpg

CC BY 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[Image ID: A painting depicting the Roman sacking of Jerusalem. The Roman leader's head has been replaced with Mark Zuckerberg's head. The wall has Apple's 'Think Different' wordmark and an Ios 'low battery' icon.]

Next week (Feb 8-17), I'll be in Australia, touring my book *Chokepoint Capitalism* with my co-author, Rebecca Giblin. We'll be in Brisbane on Feb 8, and then we're doing a remote event for NZ on Feb 9. Next is Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. I hope to see you!

https://chokepointcapitalism.com/

[itshype]

Anyone who wants to opt out of Discord's new arbitration policy (if you've accepted them and you're in the USA, you've accepted that policy.) You have 30 days to email them.

I do encourage people to read the ToS themselves if this will affect them but essentially, if you want to sue them in the future for less than $10k the case will go through an arbitrator and you have waived your right to a jury trial.

Opt-out. You can decline this agreement to arbitrate by emailing an opt-out notice to arbitration-opt-out@discord.com within 30 days of 15 April 2024 or when you first register your Discord account, whichever is later, otherwise, you shall be bound to arbitrate disputes in accordance with the terms of these paragraphs. If you opt out of these arbitration provisions, Discord also will not be bound by them.

Now, they don't say exactly what needs to be included in the email, however, Discord's parent company 'Take Two' put this clause into the ToS of a video game they also own back in 2019. In the ToS for that game they go into some details about what was required to opt-out. I am NOT a lawyer, but I have made a template for the opt-out email based on that older boilerplate, and my general understanding of new current ToS. Here is the link to my template.

[embraquil]

They have something going on and I cant be convinced otherwise

[serpentface]

FAMILY TITLES AMONG THE HILL TRIBES

(ft. various linguistic notes and tangents)

In-universe Brakul’s self-given title of ‘Red-Dog’ is Brakul 'ne-Dainh' in his native language (Bict-Urbinnas dialect of the Highland language group) and Brakul 'Chin-Reyla' in Wardi. Ne-Dainh/Chin-Reyla is not something he treats as or considers an actual surname or identity, just a self-styled nickname. He already has a title.

Family names/surnames are not a native practice among the Hill Tribes (though some clans or individual families have adopted this practice), and all traditionally use titles that designate immediate ancestry, clan and tribe. These full titles are officially given when one comes of age and are spoken aloud in ceremony (with the entire direct male and female lines listed by name, with most traditions expecting 12 generations of each being named).

The function is to cement one’s sense of place in the world, and their place in a direct ancestral line, which puts the person under the full watch and guidance of their ancestors. It's also a critical method of recording lineage- the long held practice of each person memorizing at least 24 total direct ancestors allows for very long, largely accurate records of family history to be kept, with some people able to trace their ancestry all the way back to initial settlement of the Highlands (or even beyond).

Brakul’s full title is:

“Brakul virsum Kuligan et Borunil an Briyonis ne-Taig an Bict-Urbinnas”

Which dead literally translates to “Brakul son of Kuligan and Borunil of the Foothills (of) Red-Cattle, of the North (Urbin/Erubin) River Valley” but has a much richer meaning in the original language.

"BRAKUL VIRSUM KULIGAN ET BORUNIL"

The actual meaning here is closer to ‘Brakul, son of Kuligan and his father’s fathers, and Borunil and her mother’s mothers’.

“Virsum” means ‘child (son/daughter) of’ (the gender is contextual), but implies the person’s status as a descendant of a full male and female line of ancestors. A different word is used if you’re just saying ‘I’m so and so’s son”. The title describes him as a son of his father Kuligan and of Kuligan’s male line, and of his mother Borunil and Borunil's female line.

All ancestors (within this particular system of kinship, divided into one direct male line from the father and one direct female line from the mother, and not including husbands from the female line or wives from the male line) are invoked and credited with the word ‘virsum’. Speaking it as part of the personal title is part of the routine and necessary honoring of one’s ancestors, who watch over their descendants from the afterlife and can temporarily return to the land to guide and protect (and sometimes punish, or teach sharp lessons to) the living.

"AN BRIYONIS NE-TAIG"

The actual meaning here would be understood as ‘clan/people of the foothills where cattle are lit red by the setting sun'.

‘Briyonis’ is the word for ‘foothill’, citing his clan’s specific location being the foothills that form the slopes of the north Urbin river valley. He is of a lesser clan within the powerful North Urbin River tribe. His clan benefits from close affiliation to their more powerful ruling clans located directly in the river valley, which grants them access to a greater variety of cultivated foods, but their actual position in the foothills still renders them predominantly reliant on cattle for subsistence. Clan names referencing cattle or horses are very common, given their frequent centrality to life.

The ‘ne-Taig’ literally means ‘red cattle’, but the ‘ne’ color word for red specifically invokes shades of red seen in and cast by a rising/setting sun. This red cast is culturally regarded as a unique beauty and evocative (and part of the name) of the solar god Hraighne. The foothills his clan is physically located on are a vantage point from which the western horizon is not fully obscured by mountains, and they experience very striking sunsets and are directly touched by the light. This is fairly unique to this location, and is invoked in the clan name and identity. ‘Ne-Taig’ here suggests a visual of grazing cattle illuminated red by the sun as it crosses the horizon.

‘Ne-Dainh’ carries the same implication, a dog illuminated red by setting sunlight. The Wardi language does not have a comparable word for a sunlit red and ‘Chin-Reyla’ really does just mean ‘(orangeish) red dog’ (‘reyla’ is specific to orangey-red colors, which is the closest match he could get. There’s no way to impart the meaning of ‘sunlit-red dog’ in Wardi that is non-clunky enough to be appropriate for a name).

"AN BICT-URBINNAS"

‘an Bict-Urbinnas’ is fairly simple, Bict means ‘north’, and 'Urbin' is the name of the specific river that stems from a northern and eastern tributary. This river has a very ancient name (or a derivative of one) that predates settlement by the Hill Tribes, and its exact meaning is lost.

The root -(n)nas designates a river valley, but has strong implications of being an esteemed and bountiful place, rather than solely a literal geographical descriptor (as the river valleys are centers of power and trade in the highlands). It may be a loanword from the Wardi language family, as its usage is VERY similar in form and function to the Wardi -(n)nos, which also suggests a place of esteem and bounty (more specifically having connotations of a kingdom).

’An’ literally means ‘of’, but in the specific sense of describing the place and identity of a collection of people. ‘an Bict Urbinnas’ would be understood in speech as ‘of the north Urbin River Valley (people)’. The clans historically settled in and around the valley of the North Urbin River form the totality of the Bict-Urbinnas tribe.

The ‘Urbin’ word predates the contemporary Wardi name ‘Erubin’ for the river, the latter of which invokes the semi-mythological founding figure Erub, who himself was of a Wardi tribe located downriver to the south of the Highlands. The real historically extant ‘Erub’ was most likely named Urub after the river, with his cited name shifting over the centuries in folklore, and the Wardi name for the river shifting with it.

‘Erubin’ as a corruption of ‘Urbin’ functions very well in Wardi language due to ‘-bi/bin’ denoting something as a ‘gift’, usually in a more metaphorical sense. ‘Erubin’ is understood as meaning ‘(The river that is) Erub’s gift’, and the Erubin/Urbin river is a key tributary to the much larger Black river, one of the key rivers that feeds the region's wetter and more fertile west. This 'gift' meaning also occurs in the name of the southeastern Imperial Wardi city-state Erubinnos, which is understood as meaning ’((The kingdom that is) Erub’s gift’. He is considered to have conquered and taken the land (from the core city's actual founders, the Wogan people) and established a kingdom there in the early days of warring Wardi tribal monarchies.

[gloobottle]

[stalkiwi]

So my brain had a thought

A.Corp (Arbitrer of the Head) identity Don would do everything to have arbitrer identities for my favorite idiots please

[rathockey]

sign sway to an 8x8 NOW sweeney or i swear to god i‘ll be in your walls