Opt Out of Hulu's New Binding Arbitration Clause | Hacker News Reader

Opt Out of Hulu's New Binding Arbitration Clause

honeypot.net

37 pointswilkystyle15 comments

Now we just need a SaaS one-click page that can send that physical letter in our names. I'm not even a Hulu subscriber but I'll pay $5 per letter to be wholesomely maliciously compliant. What's needed to make this happen? Let's get the right people in a room, train a model, IPO in 2025. Letters.ai is for sale for $2M. Who's with me?

Lob.com API-fy’s US postal mail. But I think it’s more popular in the B2C context, aka marketing mail, not C2B context.

MaliciouslyCompliant.ai has a better ring to it

I wouldn't want to publicly declare malice aforethought.

Dibs on Cloud Engineer. Let's do this.

Seems like something Permission Slip could do https://permissionslipcr.com/

In case anyone is interested I've been compiling as much factual information on arbitration here. Not yet complete but reasonably useful and well sourced. I've posted this here before, but now it has a new website: https://arbitrationinformation.org/docs/problems/

While I confess I didn't read all that, thanks for putting this together!

TL;DR the advantages lean overwhelmingly toward the company and away from the individual. As the end user of a service, there's nearly no reason I'd want to go to arbitration. For small matters, I'd rather go to small claims court. For larger matters, I'd prefer to hire an attorney on contingency.

The fascinating thing is how desperate business is to avoid legal precedent.

Arbitration doesn't create one. Class action suits inevitably end with a settlement with an explicit "we don't admit wrongdoing but will cut a cheque to settle the matter."

It's as though the entire capitalist experiment will come crashing down if a court ever emits a formal and binding "Don't."

Hey, that's me! I've opted out of such things before, but it usually involves sending an email or clicking a web form. This is the first time I remember having to put a dead tree letter in the mail.

It went out in the post today.

This is effectively a Hobson's choice buried in the benignly malicious obfuscation of a EULA. "a. Complete this painful process to achieve a simple task; b. agree to what favors us and harms you; or c. don't use the service."

It's interesting that the opt-out instructions fail to explicitly mention a Hulu account, only a Disney+ or ESPN+ account.

Note that opting out of binding arbitration and the class-action waiver are two different choices that must be both stated explicitly.

Over the past few years, mass arbitrations have become an imperfect way for consumers to get relief where there is an arbitration provision with a class action waiver.

Unfortunately, you'll see in the Hulu agreement (as well as in other standard user agreements, e.g. DoorDash), that companies (and their lawyers) have gotten creative in figuring out ways to avoid even mass arbitrations.

In the case of Hulu, you cannot even file an arbitration until you: (1) send a written notice of dispute; and (2) have an individual one-on-one call or teleconference. You can hire a lawyer, but you have to personally participate in the teleconference.

What is the point of this? The CEO of Hulu doesn't have to participate. They'll just send some rando in-house counsel or paralegal. The only purpose here is to make it as painful as possible to file a claim.

I still don't understand how companies are not needed to send registered mail for these changes? Isn't same expectations only fair on both sides?

I don’t get that either. How can they draw what seems like a contract, then change it on a whim without further agreement? Apparently it’s legal, but I don’t think it should be.

It's legal because they collectively paid a shit ton of money to make it legal.

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