Are these users spending their off time sampling lead paint chips? It took me less than 5 minutes to cancel my subscription when I decided I needed to save money last month.
The process described and shown by the screenshots does seem a bit much for a cancellation. Suing feels disproportionate when I first hear it, but are there many other recourses to force it to become more user friendly?
Based on what I’m reading in the post (since I don’t use Discord), it’s still obstructing the cancelation flow and making the user go through more steps, which is illegal in California.
Good! Holy fucking shit is insane at the amount of predatory crap in software these days!
It’s literally become a fucking science on how to manipulate people by wearing them the fuck down with pop-ups, sign-ups, notifications, and “related” content. Anything besides giving the user the opportunity to do what they fucking want to do in the first place.
Honestly, Lemmy is a breath of fresh air. It’s also insane how straightforward and easy it is to use, especially considering the reputation the fediverse has for being “complicated.”
Open source software seems to be the only way to be free of dark patterns. Why use products that are actively against you?
The Reputation comes from people who have never tried it and are looking for an excuse why they don’t use it.
It’s Not more complicated than E-Mail
Reminder for everybody to never install Discord. It functions as a desktop web app, and you can even use it like so on your phone. You shouldn’t even give Discord your phone number, tbh, and you should never pay them money.
I keep trying to remove my phone number from my Discord account, but each time I do “suspicious activity” is found on my account and needs my phone number to verify.
I wonder if you can submit a support ticket? Although, if they’ve already got record of your number it doesn’t really do much good to remove it. Not giving it to them is just something that makes your habbits harder to track and make it harder for them and associated companies to build profiles on for things like advertisement and in some cases mass surveillance and espionage, although I make no statements on the extent of Discord’s particular activities.
It wasn’t that hard to cancel. People are just dumb.
Now if you want a pain in the ass subscription to get rid of, I’ll say Amazon that requires you 4 - 5 clicks to get rid of it as they’re pleading with you to stay.
Bullshit. I had to chargeback my credit card to cancel it, it was insane
It wasn’t that hard to cancel. People are just dumb
If a subscription is harder to cancel than it is to sign up, that’s anti-consumer. It’s not really anything to do with anyone’s intelligence.
It’s also illegal in EU.
and California (where this lawsuit is coming from)
I mean technically it is harder to sign up to Discord Nitro, you have to enter your payment details. Where cancelling is just a few clicks.
No, it absolutely does have something to do with people’s intelligence. Because if you can’t seem to follow the prompts there to cancel? Yeah, you’re kind of dumb.
It’s different than in Amazon’s case where sometimes they’ll flip the buttons on you, tricking you to resume. That kind of thing is anti-consumer.
They’re both anti-consumer; the difference is in the degree.
How is the Discord way anti-consumer? Here, let me walk through to you the steps:
I go to Subscriptions on the app, I see my subscriptions now, I see a button that says Cancel. I click it, a window pops up that says I can Continue or Nevermind. Right now I’d Continue but I don’t want to because I’m on a month trial, but I do imagine that by clicking Continue, it’ll end things with a notification that tells me I’ve unsubscribed.
How is that process anti-consumer? It’s stupid easy to understand. I think you’re just arguing for the sake of arguing.
Button that doesn’t look like a button.
Unclear phrasing…
Now, am I saying it’s impossible to understand? No. Do I think it rises to the level of law-suit worthy? Barely.
Is it anticonsumer and intentionally designed so as to make it more difficult to unsubscribe and put up barriers to get people to stay? Absolutely.
What the other user here is documenting Discord doing with the cancel button that doesn’t look like a cancel button are called “Dark Patterns.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern
The point of a Dark Pattern is to make options unclear and how to do things just ever so slightly confusing. Why? Because unlike you and me, this will trip up a significant number of users. They wouldn’t be doing it if it wasn’t working.
Further, the US FTC considers Dark Patterns such a big deal that in 2021 they committed to ramping up enforcement of removing Dark Patterns that make it difficult to cancel subscriptions.
It’s also important to note that Discord is being sued through a California law:
When you read through this, the Dark Patterns that Discord uses definitely fall under this law. One hopes that the FTC will do some follow-up with Discord as well.
But I mean, go ahead, keep denying that psychological tricks are being used to make it difficult for some people to cancel. Not everyone’s brain works the same ways, and things that are easy to see for you aren’t easy to see for everyone. When it comes to consumer protections, we protect everyone, we don’t just say “You must be dumb, sucks to be you! I guess that means it’s okay to exploit you!” I mean, I personally am not cool with tricking the mentally handicapped for a quick buck.
Because it’s easier to sign up than it is to cancel.
A lot of people are dumb. Half the world’s population has a below average intelligence.
Why should we allow companies to victimize dumb people? Why is that ok to you?
Why are you pulling strawmen out of your ass?
I fail to see how it’s a strawman. Either you’re ok with companies taking advantage of people because they’re not very intelligent or you’re not.
Half of the world are below median intelligence, it’s likely the average isn’t also the median
Intelligence is usually graded on a normal distribution.
Dumb people deserve to be protected by the law.
Amazon is pretty easy, just go to the renewal page and say don’t auto renew and hit confirm
It’s not harder to cancel than to sign up though. It’s a one or 2 clock process to cancel and a whole lot of card details entering to sign up.
You want one that’s a pain to cancel have a look at nowTV as well, sign up for one package, checkbox at bottom that’s hard to spot (and refuse)under the big “Exclusive offer” they throw in another package, double monthly then after that they’ll add in a free gift of 4K, then charge you after first month. All of which need to be cancelled separately, and also they make it almost impossible to delete your payment info.
I have never had nitro but I did cancel Amazon prime easily.
They signed up for Discord Nitro, the bar is kinda low.
Yes, Amazon is the worst! My echo dot asked me if I wanted to sign up for Amazon music, I said no, the echo dot misheard me and signed me up. Then I had to spend 10 minutes navigating the stupid Amazon website to cancel, making sure I click the correct greyed out button otherwise I’d have to start the process over again. Super anti-consumer behavior but what else would you expect from Amazon.
My echo dot asked me if I wanted to sign up for Amazon music, I said no, the echo dot misheard me and signed me up.
People in 1960s would’ve deemed this sentence as deranged lol. You’re talking to a machine and it misheard you and took your money? Are you pulling my leg?
The thing will just ask you and start taking your money if it thinks you said yes? I see so many ways this can go wrong, but then again, maybe that’s is what amazon wants.
Yeah but the thing is California law makes it pretty simple. It must be around as easy to cancel as it is to subscribe
If you’re able to subscribe to Nitro by clicking a button in your hot bar you must be able to cancel Nitro via a similar method. It’s one of the main reasons that Sirius XM allows canceling via a button if you have your residence set as California
With Discord Nitro they have pop-ups everywhere advertising you to try to get you to subscribe and all it takes is clicking the pop up and then hitting subscribe (if you already have a payment method saved), if you’re looking to unsubscribe you have to going to your settings find your Discord Nitro subscription hit the cancel button find the cancel button on there please don’t go button find the cancel button on the discount page that they give you to try to convince you not to go and then confirm it with an are you sure (unless they removed that one). It’s not a very streamlined process
Not surprised.
They keep offering these “Free Trials” of Nitro, but then they wanted me to put in a credit card in order to claim it?
Last I checked free means I’m not handing over shit.
But hey I know what’s up, they just want me to forget I have Nitro, bill me for a month when I do, and then make it difficult to cancel knowing that I can’t just tell my bank to dispute the charge because then they’d ban my account.
That’s why the second the Free Trial needed a card, I just backed out of it.
When are we switching to Revolt?
The state of lawyers who didn’t make the jump to Truth and Safety Overlord is looking pretty sad.
I know apps don’t like having subscriptions through Apple/Google where they take 15-30%, but it does make it easier to cancel sometimes
It also makes it easy to find all your subscriptions in one place. When every provider tries to get you to subscribe, hunting them all down becomes a pain.
I know what you mean but saying this on a decentralised federated social network which encourages separate instances is very ironic
Eh, your account is still tied to an instance. That instance stores your subscriptions, as well as the vast majority of your preferences. If you want to get way into the weeds, that’s why Jerboa won’t persist comment sort order, but other clients will - there is a server side prefer for all/local/subscribed and new/hot/best at a post level, but not at a comment level.
i got a trial then cancelled it once, sure, subscribing was easier than unsubscribing but it wasnt nearly as bas as a ton of other companies, namely amazon.
Okay I’ve done the free discord nitro a couple of times and i gotta say… It was surprisingly easy to cancel. Billing and subscriptions tab in discord —> nitro subscription cancel service button. Thats it. It’s hardly as bad as the rest of them, and so it is a little surprising seeing them go to court over it.
Let them try cancelling Amazon Prime:)
Friendly reminder you can cancel your trial version / free month if you have activated one recently, and you’ll keep the perks until your trial runs out.
Glad they are going for this, although it seems a bit weird that they aren’t going for bigger players that have similar or worse tactics.
I cancelled my Amazon Prime trial the other day, and in order to dissuade me the site switched to French…
Maybe just a bug (I tried again and it was in English) but the hoops sites make you jump through to cancel a subscription is ridiculous. Constantly asking you if you’re sure, offering discounts, swapping the position and colour of the buttons… The Humble Choice one is particularly bad, and the final screen tells you you’re cancelled and the prominent button signs you right the fuck back up again.
If you can sign up in one click, you should be able to cancel in one click.
You should be able to cancel ALL of this shit from your credit card provider/bank apps. One click, gone, bye-bye.
That was probably just a fluke but Amazon does freak out after you cancel. It asks you to renew with a popup, a prominent shipping option, and embedded windows when you buy things without Prime.
You can cancel Billing Agreements in PayPal. It’s quite convenient
Do be aware that doing it this way will probably lead to your account with that business being terminated.
Fine for somethings that you never want to go back to anyway.
Let them try cancelling Amazon Prime:)
how is it too difficult to cancel? you literally just go to manage subscription and click cancel and it ends at the end of the current term…
Is it the same in every country though?
