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1. Embed this notice
   Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 08:59:41 JST Cory Doctorow

   In reading a fascinating and important discussion of the lack of a termination clause in the new Mastodon.social Terms of Service:

   https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/35086

   I was GOBSMACKED to discover the new ToS has a "binding arbitration waiver," which takes away your right to sue, no matter how badly the service abuses you.

   These are profoundly unethical, terrible clauses. They should never, ever appear in "adhesion contracts" (that is, contracts that you merely click through, rather than negotiating.)

   • Paul Cantrell and Rich Felker repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     InfiniteHench (infinitehench@mstdn.games)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 08:59:38 JST InfiniteHench

     in reply to

     @pluralistic Exceptionally hard disagree about the 'hypothetical' harms of people's work being stolen by AI.

     People steal a couple hundred dollars of groceries or retail goods and they go to jail, at least here in the US.

     Every. single. major AI company has openly admitted to the *fact* that they have stolen tens if not hundreds of millions in licensed content to build their companies. Their companies *could not exist* without the millions if not billions in content they have stolen instead of license

     It is one of the most widespread, brazen, and massive transfers of wealth from the working class to the oppressive oligarchy class I can think of

   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 08:59:39 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     I am very shocked to see this in the ToS for the flagship Mastodon instance, promulgated by the Mastodon nonprofit.

     To be clear, I think this is *much* worse than, say, requiring users of mastodon.social to agree to have their posts used to train LLMs. The harms of having your work fed to an AI are mostly hypothetical and relate to moral qualms.

     By contrast, a binding arbitration waiver would literally allow the management of mastodon.social to cause your DEATH and face no consequences.

     Steve's Place, scriptjunkie and carl marks repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 08:59:40 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     No one, and I do mean NO ONE, should ever, ever, EVER agree to a binding arbitration waiver.

     These are the most grotesquely unfair contractual terms in routine use today. The potential for abuse is literally unlimited.

     Remember when a Disney World visitor died of an allergic reaction after being assured that her food order was allergen-free? Disney argued that her family couldn't sue because her husband had clicked through an arbitration waiver when signing up for a free trial of Disney Plus.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
     Rich Felker repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 10:45:57 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     I am trying not to be dramatic here, but this is a deal-breaker for me - literally. I changed dentists because I wouldn't sign binding arbitration. I changed solar installers because I wouldn't sign binding arbitration.

     I could never, in good conscience, recommend that someone use a service that required binding arbitration as a condition of use - which means that as of July 1, I would no longer be able to recommend that people get an account on mastodon.social.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
     Paul Cantrell repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 10:46:45 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     @Gargron Also, I saw your note on the Github issue about using pro-bono counsel. If you'd like me to ask EFF's lawyers about helping Mastodon come up with fair and user-rights-preserving ToS, please email me at cory@eff.org

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 10:46:46 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     • Eugen Rochko

     And since mastodon.social is the flagship instance, which sets the moral example - and the workaday template - for most instances in the Fediverse, this catastrophically bad clause is likely to proliferate far and wide throughout the Fediverse, rendering most of this new, better internet unfit for use.

     Please, @Gargron, reconsider this. It is a very bad look - and worse still, it's a very, very bad example.

     Steve's Place repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 10:47:18 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     • Eugen Rochko
     • Mike Masnick ✅
     • Pax Ahimsa Gethen

     @funcrunch @Gargron @mmasnick

     Here's the "binding arbitration" tag on my blog:

     https://pluralistic.net/tag/binding-arbitration/

   • Embed this notice
     Pax Ahimsa Gethen (funcrunch@me.dm)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 10:47:19 JST Pax Ahimsa Gethen

     in reply to

     • Eugen Rochko
     • Mike Masnick ✅

     @pluralistic @Gargron @mmasnick

     Even if they do remove it I think it would be useful to blog about why you believe binding arbitration is so dangerous, unless you already have done so recently.

     Steve's Place repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Pax Ahimsa Gethen (funcrunch@me.dm)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 10:47:21 JST Pax Ahimsa Gethen

     in reply to

     • Eugen Rochko

     @pluralistic @Gargron

     I assume you'll be blogging about this shortly?

   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 10:47:21 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     • Eugen Rochko
     • Mike Masnick ✅
     • Pax Ahimsa Gethen

     @funcrunch @Gargron Probably not, though nothing's impossible. I've also reached out to @mmasnick to see about getting the arbitration clause in the Bluesky ToS (which I didn't know about until just now) removed.

   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 10:48:03 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     • oscarfalcon

     @oscarfalcon

     I think that's premature - in the Github discussion, Eugen says that the lawyers they used were unfamiliar with this kind of community-oriented project. It's not too late to amend the ToS, and I am reasonably certain that this represents a misstep, not a deliberate attempt to foist bad terms on Mastodon users. I think we should expect that Eugen and the org will do the right thing here.

   • Embed this notice
     oscarfalcon (oscarfalcon@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 10:48:04 JST oscarfalcon

     in reply to

     @pluralistic

     Oh man... Does this mean I HAVE TO CHANGE INSTANCES??? IT DOES DOESN't IT!

     Blast!

     Steve's Place repeated this.
   • Embed this notice
     Steve's Place (steter@mastodon.stevesworld.co)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 10:49:05 JST Steve's Place

     in reply to

     • oscarfalcon

     @pluralistic @oscarfalcon They had better, because I'm not in the mood to roll my own - which I will do if this nonsense keeps up. Stop making me work, people!

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 12:01:51 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Eugen Rochko

     @pluralistic @Gargron "Pro-bono" in the sense that Facebook's lawyers "donated" their time to Mastodon gGmbH to write a ToS that covers Facebook's ass for syndicating posts from Mastodon onto Threads.

   • Embed this notice
     Complexity of systems (addressforbots@social.apcn.nz)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 14:36:26 JST Complexity of systems

     in reply to

     • Eugen Rochko

     @pluralistic @Gargron Who would be willing to bet that they hired a lawyer that specialises in stuff like drafting TOS for online services and they just went with what the lawyer recommended. With the lawyer probably having all kinds of convincing arguments about how this was "industry standard" and why the terms were necessary if they wanted the project and/or the not for profit to not be sued.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     Eugen Rochko (gargron@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 14:37:33 JST Eugen Rochko

     in reply to

     • かき@GNUsocialJP
     • Rich Felker

     @dalias @pluralistic No.

   • Embed this notice
     Infoseepage (infoseepage@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 22:27:56 JST Infoseepage

     in reply to

     • Mastodon

     @pluralistic @Mastodon Wish we didn't see this thing over and over again, with new terms of service being put out as a done deal and then waves of community protest and advisement. How about actually developing terms in concert and consultation with the community instead of this whiplash shit?

   • Embed this notice
     Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Thursday, 19-Jun-2025 22:27:57 JST Cory Doctorow

     in reply to

     • Mastodon

     Good to see that @Mastodon has hit pause on the new ToS and are going to revisit the offending clauses.

     https://mastodon.social/@Mastodon/114709820512537821