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FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

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Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#481

Post by jbombadil »

rootusrootus wrote: post #326
cortesoft wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I remember when Amazon Prime first started, I signed up for the free trial to get free shipping on something. Of course, I forgot about it and didn’t cancel, but then I got an email from Amazon saying, “hey, you didn’t cancel your prime subscription but you also haven’t used it at all, so we are going to not charge you and cancel it for now. Here is how you easily restart your subscription if you end up needing…

Early Amazon was pro-customer in a way that I think most people have forgotten. Maybe that was always the strategy? They were losing money for years, and maybe that was investing in the company, or maybe it was allowing really large losses to keep customers happy, planning all along to eventually clamp down when people were addicted. And here we are. Their return rate is still pretty terrible, IIRC. I bet they are tr…

> Early Amazon was pro-customer in a way that I think most people have forgotten. Maybe that was always the strategy? They were losing money for years, and maybe that was investing in the company, or maybe it was allowing really large losses to keep customers happy, planning all along to eventually clamp down when people were addicted. And here we are.

Yup. This is the playbook of the Enshittification[1] process as coined by Cory Doctorow.

> Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market", where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#482

Post by grigri907 »

hnburnsy wrote: post #358
Uehreka wrote: post #190

When people try and say that regulating stuff like this is impossible, I often think about how unreasonably great the regulations around “Unsubscribe” links in emails are. There really seems to be no loophole or workaround despite there being huge incentive for there to be one. Every time I click an “Unsubscribe” link in an email (it seems like they’re forced to say “Unsubscribe” and not use weasel words to hide the…

>There really seems to be no loophole or workaround despite there being huge incentive for there to be one. Every time I click an “Unsubscribe” link in an email... The loophole is that companies now claim that the email is 'service' related as part of your 'account relationship' so you cannot unsubscribe at all, even though it clearly is for marketing and promotion.

Agreed. I get daily emails from Salesforce/Tableau that start, "this is a non-promotional email," as if those magic words cleanse anything that follows.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#484

Post by andrewla »

advisedwang wrote: post #454
andrewla wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big difference here is that this was created by an act of Congress, not the result of a regulatory body straining at the limits of its remit. That makes it much more likely to survive administration changes or court challenges. Even now the CAN-SPAM act feels outdated -- I do like the unsubscribe button, but I would like to see email verification made explicitly required. That in order to start emailing you, you…

> regulatory body straining at the limits of its remit The FTC's establishing laws make "unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce" unlawful and give them power to regulate that. It doesn't seem to be straining at the limits of remit to rule that making it hard for people to end a subscription is unfair/deceptive.

To whom is this "unfair"? A business has a legitimate interest in preventing customers from taking advantage of bulk discounts (committing to a long term of service in exchange for lower prices), and customers have a legitimate interest in opting to discontinue a service that is no longer needed. Where to draw that line does not seem cut and dry to me.

What is the specific nature of the "deception" -- what claim was made, and how is it not being honored?

Don't get me wrong -- I've been bit by this and I hate it and I think Lina Khan has done wonders for antitrust enforcement and I wish that she would take it even further, but the proper body to address this is Congress, through legislation rather than regulation.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#485

Post by danaris »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #271
danaris wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble is, without some overriding authority defining what it means to "have a plane ticket", what counts as "included"? Because anything that doesn't can then be considered an "add-on". Carry-on luggage. Meal/snack and beverage service. A pillow and blanket. A seat that's not a middle seat. Even the ability to choose your seat at all. Airlines that want to tighten the screws on their passengers can, in theory,…

None of those things should be included. I want none and dont want to pay for having access to them. What we actually need is a business that lets you put in the add ons you want and shows you how much that would cost.

That's a very "I got mine" type of attitude.

You think everyone should be expected to pay extra not to

- fly with nothing but the clothes on their back

- separated from their family

- with no food or drink, on a 5, 10, 15-hour flight

- with no leg or elbow room

- and no pillow or blanket to make it even vaguely possible to sleep?

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#486

Post by malfist »

thayne wrote: post #423
ksd482 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I have noticed companies do is resume emails after a year or so. They probably think people would forget about unsubscribing them after a year, and for the most part they are right. If I catch any of these email lists not respecting my unsubscribing, I immediately mark them as "spam". Gmail then doesn't send them to my inbox anymore. I don't think just one person marking them as spam hurts them, but at least I f…

Or they interpret any kind of interaction after a while of inactivity as "yes please sign me up for all your newsletters, even though I previously explicitly told you to unsubscribe me"

The worst for this is Shopify. If you've ever given your email to shopify, they will absolutely share it to a page you visit, even if you don't check out.

Throw something in the cart at a random website? Now you're on their mailing list and get reminders to finish checking out. Doesn't matter that you never consented. I don't know how this isn't a violate of the CAN-SPAM act

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#487

Post by bjoli »

justinpombrio wrote: post #265
Uehreka wrote: post #190

When people try and say that regulating stuff like this is impossible, I often think about how unreasonably great the regulations around “Unsubscribe” links in emails are. There really seems to be no loophole or workaround despite there being huge incentive for there to be one. Every time I click an “Unsubscribe” link in an email (it seems like they’re forced to say “Unsubscribe” and not use weasel words to hide the…

Unsubscribe links are a fantastic regulation, but there is a workaround. I must have received at least a dozen emails from Brown after graduating despite unsubscribing to every email they sent. The trouble is they're endlessly creative about the lists they put you on. I'd get one email from "Alumni Connections" and then another from "Faculty Spotlight" and then another from "Global Outreach" and then another from "Ev…

For those occasions you use GDPR if you are European.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#488

Post by ethbr1 »

fragmede wrote: post #470
ethbr1 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should go back the early web idea and just fractionally charge for email. E.g. $0.001 per email, paid to the recipient Insignificant at personal scale, but a deterrent to sending low-value emails at mass scale, and double-painful when an unbalanced flow (i.e. a spammer who receives no organic email coming in)

And, as we all know, charging money for a blue checkmark totally solved the bot problem on Twitter.

You don't need to re-pay for the blue checkmark for everyone who reads your post.

The key insight here was making it expensive for spammers, but cheap for everyone else.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#489

Post by bubblethink »

nerdjon wrote: post #56

> will require sellers to make it as easy for consumers to cancel their enrollment as it was to sign up. I am very curious what exactly this means? Is it the number of pages or forms you had to fill out? People you had to talk too? So if for my internet I had to have someone come out to install it before service would start could they argue that they require someone to physically come out to turn off service? Or a ca…

>I am very curious what exactly this means? Is it the number of pages or forms you had to fill out? People you had to talk too?

Captcha games are going to become an olympic sport.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#490

Post by greycol »

immibis wrote: post #473
greycol wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately political parties have more of a free pass on this as Republicans sued providers for their emails getting caught up in spam filters around 2022 (Who would've thought continuosly emailing people who click unsubscribe on your emails who then start reporting as spam would get you put on spam lists). Now political parties (and some bulk providers) have special tools to bypass rejection with some providers a…

I'm actually amazed at this because it seems to be the first time he Democrats are actually taking advantage of all the loopholes the Republicans made, rather than trying to take the high road.

I'm pretty sure that most marketeers correlate with the "it's fine to send lots of useless crap to people for $x justifcation" philosphy. You pick a Marketeer(D) or Marketeer(R) and they'll be happy to use whatever legal tools they can use in that vein (Sure there's good ones but they're rarer). I'd classify it as a failing in their world view rather than a moral one, not to say there aren't immoral marketeers.
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