Every day, we work to make our platform the best it can be, which includes regularly revisiting our terms and policies (also known as our House Rules) to make sure they meet the needs of our growing community and allow us to continue to support you. Today, we’re sharing a few updates that go into effect on September 15, 2024.
We’ve made some changes to our dispute resolution clause (section 11) for users in North and South America, with updates to our arbitration procedures for smaller matters and for coordinated or “mass” arbitrations (with 25 or more claimants). We have also updated the choice of law that’s applicable to the Terms. As before, the arbitration agreement includes a class action and jury waiver, which means we’ll be resolving most disputes in private, individual arbitration, and not in court. Please read this section carefully. We’ve added which entity acts as the merchant of record, depending on a buyer’s currency and location of your payment instrument.
So, if you’re upset at all you can’t sue, you can’t go to the courts, you have to sit in a an arbitration with someone we choose who (trust us) won’t be biased.
To add in, an annoyance for sure:
Effective July 29, our Adult Nudity and Sexual Content Policy introduces more rigorous guidelines regarding our prohibitions of nude or sexual content, as well as how to appropriately list certain mature content.
The idea is that if you wanted to fight a big company with lawyers you’ll either lose because they will delay till you’re broke, or you’ll win but the lawyers will get most of the money. If you have a legit issue they would honor resolving the issue without anyone having to spend time, money, and publicity in court. It means you might actually win one of these times. The joke part is we already have an unbiased arbitration system…our courts.
This is legal, currently, because this is basically a non-disclosure. We will deal with our problems outside the legal system and no one will talk about it. We do this in other cases but its usually human to human, not human to massive corporate entity.
The real reason all the companies are coming up with forced arbitration clauses is that it kills class-action lawsuits.