It has stormed the front immensely in the last 10-15 years. Almost all contracts have an arbitration section to bypass the courts which has many to blame.
It is a strange world when we live 'free' but our companies are dictatorships/feudal while using military tribunal type justice in arbitration, but it is a byproduct of ludicrous overstepping of the bounds with lawsuits so the other side gets wacky.
What's gotten crazy in the last 2 years or so after some bad Supreme Court decisions is that corporations can get more and more sneaky about saying what constitutes your "agreement" to their terms - things like "liking" the company on Facebook or walking through the door of their fast food chain...
IMO the most "broken" part of the system is that the corporation gets to pick the "arbitrator" who they think will give them the best outcome (and they are paid by the corporations, too, generally). I'm not sure how "new" that part is, but when my father-in-law explained it to me (he's a trial attorney) I was like "No way - that sounds like some stuff that would happen in some 3rd world country." But I went and read up on it myself - and sure enough, that's the case.
Under AAA consumer rules (which is what roughly everyone is using) the corporation does not pick the arbitrator. The AAA does. Either side may provide factual objections, which, if upheld, only results in them picking someone new at random.
I'm not sure "where you went and read up on it itself"
Here's the rules:
It is a strange world when we live 'free' but our companies are dictatorships/feudal while using military tribunal type justice in arbitration, but it is a byproduct of ludicrous overstepping of the bounds with lawsuits so the other side gets wacky.