this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2024

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Discord sued by users claiming Nitro subscription is too difficult to cancel (www.dexerto.com)

submitted 13 hours ago by moe90@feddit.nl to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 16 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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.

[–] albert180@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 hour ago

You can cancel Billing Agreements in PayPal. It's quite convenient

[–] padge@lemmy.zip 20 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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

[–] IMALlama@lemmy.world 6 points 1 hour ago

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.

[–] MHLoppy@fedia.io 10 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

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?

[–] dan@upvote.au 10 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

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.

[–] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 32 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

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....

[–] Noodle07@lemmy.world 13 points 4 hours ago

Is it the same in every country though?

[–] john89@lemmy.ca 109 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

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."

[–] albert180@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 hour ago

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

[–] numanair@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 hours ago

Open source software seems to be the only way to be free of dark patterns. Why use products that are actively against you?

[–] leanleft@lemmy.ml 18 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

offtopic but related: android privacy settings are scattered across many hidden menus.

[–] humble_pete_digger@lemm.ee 10 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Google is just such a bunch of pricks.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 1 points 2 hours ago

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.

[–] Creat@discuss.tchncs.de 160 points 12 hours ago (3 children)

This is only a problem if you subscribe to nitro in the first place. Rookie mistake!

[–] rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee 2 points 2 hours ago

You don't understand I NEED to spam my blushies emote everywhere.

[–] iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 44 points 12 hours ago (6 children)

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.

[–] taaz@biglemmowski.win 16 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

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.

[–] Codilingus@sh.itjust.works 27 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 10 hours ago) (12 children)

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.

[–] vithigar@lemmy.ca 29 points 11 hours ago (3 children)

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.

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 32 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

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.

[–] taaz@biglemmowski.win 18 points 10 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

The downside is it's against their ToS, and you could have your account banned or similar if they do decide to take action.

[–] Codilingus@sh.itjust.works 16 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Oh no, not my free account.

Thanks for the heads up, though!

[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 5 hours ago

Eh I mean there are lots of connections I've made with people only on discord that would suck to lose.

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[–] explodicle@sh.itjust.works 53 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

All subscriptions should automatically cancel if you stop paying.

[–] Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 20 points 10 hours ago (9 children)

That's a bit circular though because they just keep billing your credit card.

[–] gaael@lemmy.world 16 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

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.

[–] IncogCyberspaceUser@lemmy.world 6 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

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.

[–] gaael@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago

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.

[–] Saik0Shinigami@lemmy.saik0.com 6 points 5 hours ago

i user privacy.com. it hits my account with unique names per card. so easy to line up.

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[–] warm@kbin.earth 3 points 6 hours ago

Huh? Every trial I have had, it's been like two button presses to cancel.

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