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US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

arstechnica.com

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Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#231

Post by evilduck »

sneak wrote: post #191
delfinom wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the FTC's fault. The problem is US congress has not functioned for 2 decades. They no longer pass actual laws. This means the FTC is stuck reinterpreting their existing powers to try and squeeze out regulation that they can but that's it.

If the FTC can’t do what the FTC is supposed to do, then that is the FTC’s fault for continuing to exist. It’s unfit for purpose and should be shut down.

The FTC have no say in choosing to exist or not exist, or what laws are passed that they are supposed to enforce. In some cases, an agency intentionally choosing to not carry out their duties would even be breaking the law and subject to penalty or punishment. How the FTC goes about interpreting their duties and then the court system correcting their behavior when they disagree or misbehave is the system working as intended. If they don't have laws to interpret for an issue though, that's a legislative problem.

The real question is why isn't congress doing their job? They control both the existence and funding of the FTC and additionally the laws the FTC are tasked with interpreting and enforcing. If congress is unfit for purpose they should be replaced.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#232

Post by Calvin02 »

noitpmeder wrote: post #220
mrtksn wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any examples of American company having worse customer experience than European ones? I will give you 2 for the opposite: Amazon and Apple do no question asked refunds all the time. Much higher bar than European regulators require.

To be honest I don't think they do "no question asked refunds" for the consumer's benefit -- probably more so that they don't have to devote customer support resources to handling all the return requests they get. I'm sure you'd soon find it's not quite a guaranteed "no questions asked" process if you repeatedly return large expensive items.

Have you ever tried to return something bought at a clothing store? I made that mistake once in France.

You’re creating an absurd standard “repeatedly return large expensive items” but even every day things are way easier in the US.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#233

Post by bluGill »

fireflash38 wrote: post #179
roenxi wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are we still talking about click-to-cancel here? There aren't 'other sides' in any meaningful sense on this sort of administrative decision. There is a solid consensus that people shouldn't have to pay for subscriptions they don't want and a couple of broadly inconsequential points to debate on how to implement it. This is exactly the sort of situation where just following all the rules and procedures is fine and it…

The "other side" here is the political group that is consistently anti-regulation, anti-consumer, anti-government.

The "other side" does not consider themselves anti-consumer. You disagree with them on what anti-consumer means, but they have their own reasons to consider their position pro-consumer and you are doing debate a disservice by ignoring that.

They do consider themselves anti-regulation and anti-government in general, but they are not (mostly) anarchists, they do agree with some regulation and government, they just want the minimum possible and thus place a high bar on how bad the alternatives must be before they will agree to regulation/government.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#234

Post by axus »

jdlshore wrote: post #194
braiamp wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it takes more than 24 hours to put a 1 click cancel button is alien to me.

You must not work on these sorts of systems. It can easily take more than 24 hours. In case you’re genuinely interested in learning more, here’s how it works. There are good reasons for it working this way, BTW. The needs of a company with hundreds or thousands of people are different than the needs of hobbyists and early-stage startups. 1. A user experience designer analyzes the user flow and decides where to put th…

Of course now that the FTC rule is well known, anyone designing a new system would require click-to-cancel. The new burden is low, but at the time the big companies probably spent millions to fix it.

A more extreme example would be the US Clean Air Act and how the EPA extended the rules to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. Obviously going to cost a lot of money, but a necessary change to dodge climate disaster. That rule had to wait for Congress to pass the Inflation Reduction Act to become legal. Hopefully this minor consumer protection rule will be supported by Congress as well.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#235

Post by jdlshore »

braiamp wrote: post #205
jdlshore wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must not work on these sorts of systems. It can easily take more than 24 hours. In case you’re genuinely interested in learning more, here’s how it works. There are good reasons for it working this way, BTW. The needs of a company with hundreds or thousands of people are different than the needs of hobbyists and early-stage startups. 1. A user experience designer analyzes the user flow and decides where to put th…

How many companies of "size" you know of? Because that process looks HORRIBLY inefficient and only primed to extract as much money of the consumer. You just need to put it in the account screen. A big red button. Your _workflow_ is there to make excuses. If the move was the other way, you would gladly pay the cost, but because it actually hurts your "business model" then it is suddenly a problem. No buddy, I call BS…

For the types of issues we’re discussing here, we’re talking about companies making more than $50mm yearly, which is about 75-100 employees. So successful small businesses and larger. I don’t have exact numbers, but this size business is very common. Most professional programmers will have seen the issues I’m talking about.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#236

Post by John23832 »

What consumer does this serve at all? What citizen does this serve at all?

This only serves to allow firms to erect effort barriers to keep rent seeking fro their customers. The "gotcha" that the Khan FTC didn't "follow the rules making process" is parallel construction.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#237

Post by bluGill »

jordanb wrote: post #216
bpodgursky wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was Lina Khan. She just felt strongly about going out the way she came in — losing every single case.

There is a new FTC administration. I interpret this as being the incoming FTC wanted to kill this but not withdrawal (due to bad optics). They wanted to lose the case and did so by changing a judgment they controlled so that the rule could fail a legal procedural challenge.

It better fits the facts that the incoming FTC wants this, but they want to do the job right. At least some of the incoming FTC was in place when they rule was passed in the first place and their statements then say they wanted the rule but they wanted the correct procedures done so that it would stand up in court.

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#238

Post by cyral »

quitit wrote: post #215
everdrive wrote: post #188

One consequence here that people need to think about is that ALL subscription services should be viewed with suspicion. Once you sign up how much of your life will be deranged simply by trying to cancel the service. It's a hidden cost which shouldn't be forgotten.

This is one of the reasons why providers -hate- IAP subscriptions, even if the profit share was 0%, they'd still not be happy because with IAP it's just one click to cancel. It's not even a practice limited to "shady" companies, the New York Times would let you sign up online, but only cancel via a convoluted phone call with one of their subscription retainment reps. These days you're better off obtaining a credit ca…

Well, the "one click" cancel is hidden deep in the settings app - and when customers contact us asking to cancel, they don't like to hear that we cannot cancel or refund them from our end. (Apple doesn't even provide a way to look up the customer. Most people don't understand that Apple is actually managing the entire billing process)

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#239

Post by scrubs »

dinfinity wrote: post #204
ordinaryradical wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it’s not America it will be China and I don’t think you want to live in that world.

Depends on how far down the US is going to slide. It's sadly well underway to become much, much worse than China is (or will become).

It's not clear to me that China is batting that well. I do not wish bad upon the Chinese citizenry, and China has done well in its own day since the 1960s.

But don't forget at the same time where China was during the end of the British power, nor Chinese revolutions, nor the state control over the Chinese populace.

Although the US vastly overweights what we think non-US-democracies would do (think Middle East and our meddling there) given the chance for US like freedom, I do not think we're seeing China in the natural so to speak. HK, for example, was not pleased with the "two systems one country" rule the CPP landed on.

Add in the fact that trade can no longer be assumed to be Chinese central, and China is slowly getting dragged into wars through Russia, and China still hasn't tried its mettle with Taiwan. A post invasion China will hit different. It's got internal issues of employment, real estate, have v. have nots ... it's got its hand full.

My guess is that China, like the US is seeing now on stretches, will be the master of its own demise. In the US a major contributing factor to Trump is the fact the US Congress has become an institutional zero especially since Gingrich. That power vacuum has been filled by the Executive branch under Trump. There's more to it of course, but this two-part crisis is an important matter to keep in mind.

China takes its state craft more seriously in some sense, but that seriousness may get it into trouble. And in fact, several articles in the Economist have argued that if China wants to keep 5%+ YOY GDP growth, the CCP will have to take a back seat which is the one thing it will not do. CCP political power is foremost; good economy is damn nice to have to when you can get it -- and the CCP will go after it hard -- but there are limits ...

Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

#240

Post by bluGill »

sameermanek wrote: post #101
bpodgursky wrote: post #15

From a different article [1]: > But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit said the FTC erred in its rulemaking process by failing to produce a preliminary regulatory analysis, a statutory requirement for rules whose annual effect on the national economy would exceed $100 million. > The FTC had argued that it was not required to prepare the preliminary analysis because its initial estimate of the rule’s imp…

Devil is in the details, they said each company would have to pay for less than 23 hrs to a low level engineer to avoid the $100 mil impact. How much time do you think an intern would need to render a button on screen that says "cancel" in red mapped to an already implemented function in the code base. Especially with trillions poured into the AI? This is non sense and horse shit, and these bench full of idiots know…

Just testing this should take more than 23 hours for non-trivial code. Ship it and pray it works is not a good plan when if the code doesn't work the government will be coming after you.
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