• @[email protected]
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    81 day ago

    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.

  • Queen HawlSera
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    91 day ago

    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?

  • @[email protected]
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    81 day ago

    it’s not hard, though? I live in Turkey so I don’t get protected by EU

    Even then, it’s still a single button press

  • Jolteon
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    402 days ago

    Any place there is a way to sign up for a service, there should be a way to cancel the service. Make a pop-up that interrupts you every time you open an app asking you to sign up? You need to keep that pop up and ask if you want to cancel every time.

    • @[email protected]
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      533 days ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        3 days ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
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          403 days ago

          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.

          • Snot Flickerman
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            3 days 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.

            • Queen HawlSera
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              41 day ago

              Adblockers had existed for 15 years or more by the time YouTube finally started cracking down on them

              And I STILL manage to beat them by, literally not even knowing about the crackdown in the first place and just telling Ublock Origin to do its thing

          • @[email protected]
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            3 days ago

            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.

          • @[email protected]
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            73 days ago

            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.

        • @[email protected]
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          193 days ago

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

        • @[email protected]
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          3 days ago

          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.

        • @[email protected]
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          13 days ago

          I literally ended my comment with saying the service was worth the price, and you pitch a way to pirate it to me. Wild.

          • Midnight Wolf
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            11 day ago

            It’s your opinion that the service is worth the price; I know nobody who shares that opinion. Sharing an alternative shouldn’t be seen as hostile or “wild”. If it was like a buck a month, I’d pay that. But at checks notes $3/month for increased upload size (I have a nas with public file sharing, so…) and… emoji? or $10/month for the above + “super reactions” (wat), not-ass streaming res, “server boosts” (???) and “custom profiles” (what does that even mean? a background?)… You’re kidding me, right? I pay less for my web hosting, or my vps, my security/AV software… Even Bitwarden, or NextDNS, is pennies compared to nitro. Ten bucks a month is actually insane from my perspective. $120 a year for bigger uploads and decent streaming resolution is highway robbery.

            To use your term: wild.

          • Green Wizard
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            163 days ago

            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.

            • @[email protected]
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              63 days ago

              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.

              • Pika
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                23 days ago

                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

            • @[email protected]
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              12 days ago

              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.

          • @[email protected]
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            93 days ago

            Hah, I just like spreading the good word of piracy. Especially Discord since their app is a piece of shit.

      • @[email protected]
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        3 days 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.

        • @[email protected]
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          93 days ago

          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.

      • warm
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        32 days ago

        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.

  • @[email protected]
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    1483 days ago

    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.”

    • @[email protected]
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      182 days ago

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

    • @[email protected]
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      72 days 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

  • @[email protected]
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    392 days ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]
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      32 days ago

      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.

      • @[email protected]
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        21 day ago

        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.

  • @[email protected]
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    332 days ago

    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

    • @[email protected]
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      142 days 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.

      • @[email protected]
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        52 days ago

        I know what you mean but saying this on a decentralised federated social network which encourages separate instances is very ironic

        • @[email protected]
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          31 day ago

          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.

      • @[email protected]
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        213 days ago

        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.

        • @[email protected]
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          82 days ago

          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.

          • @[email protected]
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            92 days 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.

      • @[email protected]
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        43 days ago

        That sucks. I’d rather just pay it manually every month, or with a script running on my end.

        • yeehaw
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          193 days ago

          That sounds fun and convenient to manage for the average person…

          /s

          • @[email protected]
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            133 days ago

            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.

          • @[email protected]
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            83 days ago

            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.

          • @[email protected]
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            -13 days ago

            “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.”

            • @[email protected]
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              32 days ago

              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.

              • @[email protected]
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                22 days ago

                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.

                • @[email protected]
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                  32 days ago

                  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.

  • katy ✨
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    373 days ago

    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…

  • @[email protected]
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    92 days ago

    Will it lead to the exodus towards Matrix/Element? If I have to pay for messaging, I’d rather cut the middleman.

    • @[email protected]
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      2 days ago

      Not yet. It’s just not ready yet and people are picky about what chat features they now need.

      I wish tho.

        • @[email protected]
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          1 day ago

          Organization scheme, ease of use of the voice channels, cross platform compatibility.

          We briefly looked into discord alternatives. Element x isn’t mature enough, schildi chat could be viable. Revolt seemed to be the front runner, but the voice chat was awkward to use since it didn’t show when people were in channels, and the noise cancelling of discord was sorely missed.

      • Kairos
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        12 days 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.

    • @[email protected]
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      12 days ago

      and a lot of the permissions you can only disable one by one, 3-4 taps for each of the dozens of apps, with needing 2 taps even just to see if the permission is granted for the app

      and sadly, calyx and such forks don’t fix it either

  • MHLoppy
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    152 days ago

    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?

    • @[email protected]
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      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.

  • @[email protected]
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    313 days ago

    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.