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.
You can cancel Billing Agreements in PayPal. It’s quite convenient
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.
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.
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?
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.”
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
Open source software seems to be the only way to be free of dark patterns. Why use products that are actively against you?
offtopic but related: android privacy settings are scattered across many hidden menus.
Google is just such a bunch of pricks.
Eh. There’s parts of that in Android. The real culprit is that they do not fund the AOSP project enough. It’s just incompetence and stupidity combined with an inability to change that.
This is only a problem if you subscribe to nitro in the first place. Rookie mistake!
You don’t understand I NEED to spam my blushies emote everywhere.
I enjoy the higher streaming quality and server boosts. Discord makes it very easy for my ttrpg groups to gather weekly not to mention the many other communities it facilitates. It’s even partly responsible for me and my partner having a successful long distance relationship. The service is worth paying for, imho.
You can fake a Nitro subscription for free higher quality streaming. Look up
Vendord, it hardens Discord for better security, adds themes, and plugins. One such plugin is fake Nitro.Edit: Vencord. Got autocorrected.
Also adding I have only used fake Nitro for streaming quality. So I have no idea if it works for emojis or whatever other Nitro perks there are.
Wait, so for this to work access to the Nitro features it enables must be managed client-side and the client is fully trusted with no validation? That seems… unwise on the part of Discord.
That seems… unwise on the part of Discord.
New here? The company and people behind Discord suck shit and like all tech startups things like security are an afterthought for years on end.
Adblockers had existed for 15 years or more by the time YouTube finally started cracking down on them. I think it would probably take similarly as long before enough people were actually exploiting that loophole before Discord did anything about it.
No, the commenter ommited a lot of information, it’s not full Nitro, it’s just the features that can be enabled/worked around client-side, see my comment under the parent one.
I did say “the features it enables”, not every Nitro feature.
I don’t fully understand how Discord works, but apparently certain Nitro perks are just client side toggles. I only use it for streaming 1080@60fps, so I’m not sure about things like emojis, and after that I don’t even know what other Nitro perks exist.
The downside is it’s against their ToS, and you could have your account banned or similar if they do decide to take action.
Oh no, not my free account.
Thanks for the heads up, though!
Eh I mean there are lots of connections I’ve made with people only on discord that would suck to lose.
Vendord
Just wanted to correct that is Vencord, with a C. I couldn’t find it the other way and when I added “discord” as an additional parameter I noticed the spelling was off.
Sorry autocorrect!
All good! Just wanted to make sure people could find it
I literally ended my comment with saying the service was worth the price, and you pitch a way to pirate it to me. Wild.
Well, this “pirate” option also fixed issues that plagued the Linux desktop client for years. Discord only got screen share working about a month ago, that feature has been around since 2017 (I think). Meanwhile the “pirate” option had fixed that (even on wayland) while people were waiting for the basic features to function.
To be clear, a pirated copy of something may well be improved over the original but that doesn’t make it not a pirated copy, so you can lose the quotes. It sounds like Discord is not in a good place on Linux and I’m sure I’d agree it’s not worth the cost of the sub if I were on Linux.
Doesn’t Linux Discord still not have audio streaming unless you use Vesktop?
No, that’s what was fixed a month ago. It does still have its bugs though, I found that if the audio doesn’t show I have to close the app and reopen it before it will work, but that happened from time to time with the workarounds as well so I’m thinking maybe it’s just an issue on the Linux side
Yep, people have had to use alternative Discord clients on Linux for quite some time.
For anyone curious: Vesktop, ripcord, webcord, and armcord are the ones I tried at some point.
Hah, I just like spreading the good word of piracy. Especially Discord since their app is a piece of shit.
To clarify about the fake nitro plugin of Vencord/Vesktop:
It’s not Nitro, it just enables some features you get with nitro, mainly better streaming quality and being able to “send” emojis from any server (this is all it does, cant use any emoji reacts nor send bigger files or server boost).
Also
About the emojis, the custom/other server emojis are sent as image links which discord will render but it is not a native discord emoji and will format differently when used inline.
It also does nothing for custom emoji reacts.About streaming, Discord uses webrtc, that usually means P2P streaming which in turn means that the streaming client can send whatever they want (as long as the receiving clients understand it) and discord servers can’t say no. It’s not server authoritative communication, discord without nitro just hides the UI options, vencord gives them back.
I still have no idea what boosting a server does.
If a server gets enough boosts they can add largely useless extra stuff like more custom stickers and emojis. There’s a few legit benefits like higher quality audio / video and being able to create a custom server invite link but it’s mostly fluff.
Gotcha. Thanks!
The only reason I would pay is for the higher quality streaming, but I think the price is too steep for that, if they had a cheaper plan with just the streaming perk, then I would really consider subscribing.
I’ve thankfully never given discord a dime!
All subscriptions should automatically cancel if you stop paying.
That’s a bit circular though because they just keep billing your credit card.
In Europe, we have debit cards and some banks allow you to create them on the go. I’ve stopped bothering canceling stuff, I just create a new card for each recurrent payment and I cancel it when I don’t want to use the service any longer.
What Service do you use? I’d like to do the same, because it’s not always clear by the charge on my statement who I’m paying. I would imaging having named CCs, like email aliases, would help me keep an eye on things.
I use the Revolut free tier. And I only wire on my revolut account the amounts I want to be paying (my usual bank has free instant wire tranfers) so I don’t have any bad surprise.
They also offer single-use/disposable virtual cards, which I’ve used on websites that I didn’t trust fully (Steam keys grey market), these are automatically cancelled after one use.I don’t want to sound like I’m advertising this brand though: they’ve been a pain during the registration process (I’ve had to take selfies and videos of myself), they seem to be a shitty employer and to have bad customer support service, see the wikipedia page for more details.
i user privacy.com. it hits my account with unique names per card. so easy to line up.
That sucks. I’d rather just pay it manually every month, or with a script running on my end.
That sounds fun and convenient to manage for the average person…
/s
our fanatical obsession with convenience (and corporations exploiting that) is what created this mess.
Autopay is so expected now that many subscriptions simply don’t offer options to pay per month.
It should be as implement any “recurrent payment” as a banking procedure. Viewable in their apps or in the office. And being able to just cancel them at any time with your bank.
“Having to use this app or website is too hard. It would be more fun and convenient to jump through whatever hoops the gym decides.”
App or website? They’re talking about rolling their own code to interface with the public API of whatever service is being talked about. That’s a boatload of effort to fix something that shouldn’t be a problem to begin with.
I mentioned rolling my own code because we weren’t yet discussing the average user. Iff the time has come to make it easy for the average user, then I’d want to create an app or website instead.
Which would in turn require revenue for hosting and development. Meaning either ads, or monthly payments.
I’d rather not pay you for a service which shouldn’t need to exist. And it could be done away with by requiring an easy “cancel subscription” button which requires no hoops to go through.
Huh? Every trial I have had, it’s been like two button presses to cancel.
These guys likely haven’t tried canceling a gym membership lmao
Maybe it’s because I live in California and we have rules about this shit to a degree but I remember it being as simple as logging in and saying “end this shit bitch”
If that changed/isn’t the case elsewhere then yeah fuck em burn it
I cancelled mine last month, it was literally a couple of clicks. I got some ads about “all the things I would be losing” for some time after and that was it.
This lawsuit is specifically about them breaking California law, so it still isn’t simple enough I suppose
I had the same experience with my first trial last month.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
Because it’s easier to sign up than it is to cancel.
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.
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
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
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.
I have never had nitro but I did cancel Amazon prime easily.
Bullshit. I had to chargeback my credit card to cancel it, it was insane
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.
They signed up for Discord Nitro, the bar is kinda low.
Idk where they live but pressing cancel can’t be that difficult surely.
Unless they changed that.The state of lawyers who didn’t make the jump to Truth and Safety Overlord is looking pretty sad.
