Don't you just love getting rid of those pesky socialist regulations?
#irony
(unfortunately, this seems necessary here on HN)
US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel
321–330 of 599 posts
Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel
#322What 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.
If you actually bother to click through and read the article, you'd find the court expressed sympathies with the intent of the rule, but the FTC "is required to conduct a preliminary regulatory analysis when a rule has an estimated annual economic effect of $100 million or more", and they did not do that. The blame here belongs to the FTC for its rushed and sloppy process that put the rule on shaky ground legally.
> "If you actually bother to click through and read the article,"
HN guidelines ask that you say "The article mentions that".[0]
Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel
#323What 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.
If you actually bother to click through and read the article, you'd find the court expressed sympathies with the intent of the rule, but the FTC "is required to conduct a preliminary regulatory analysis when a rule has an estimated annual economic effect of $100 million or more", and they did not do that. The blame here belongs to the FTC for its rushed and sloppy process that put the rule on shaky ground legally.
^ This.
A shoddy implementation would just mean later problems. Hopefully the FTC gets the memo and does it "the right way" to make it watertight, otherwise people will just get away with doing whatever they want.
Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why does it have to be China and why does it have to be any one country? Why can’t it be China, EU, and the US all having about the same influence? But besides, with the rightward, populist/religious nut tilt of the US and corporations being able to bribe the President to get what they want without repercussions (Disney, Paramount, Meta, X, etc), I don’t see how the US is much better. All of the branches of governmen…
Because there will always be someone with an advantage over the others. Equilibriums in geopolitics are inherently unstable, states naturally compete for their own self-interest. No state will be willingly co-equal with another unless some actor with greater power forces it into that position. To your last point, given the state of the US, it would probably be better for the world if the EU were on top at the moment.…
While I’ve only personally spent a day in an EU country so far - a day trip from London to Paris last month (more coming over the years) - I would much rather see European values exported to the world than US values - lack of universal healthcare, gun violence, corporate takeover of government, anti-vax, anti-science nut cases, etc.
Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel
#325What 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.
A significant portion of this community believes in "move fast and break things," but just for businesses, when it comes to helping people - slow down!
To be fair, helping people like them is deadly to your community. That's what theyre signalling, and I think they might have a point. You can't just give people money (power) because they're poor - look at Latinos voting for Trump. Their ethics have to also be right.
Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel
#326What 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.
The standard capitalist response would be, it serves the consumer of a service who wouldn't be willing to pay more for the additional guarantee of click-to-cancel. It doesn't seem that farfetched to me to imagine two sites offering equivalent services, one at $5/month and the other at $6/month, with the only difference being the $6/month site offers click to cancel. This dollar price difference is often the differenc…
What's described here is really just legalized thievery with extra steps. "We make it difficult to stop paying us" versus "we charge extra for the privilege of not making it difficult to stop paying us" is just fraud versus extortion. That one or both may be technically legal is no excuse.
Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gotta pay all those data scientists and lawyers the big bucks in order to figure out how to checks notes stop actively preventing customers from canceling your service when they want to. I'm happy to consult on this with all those poor businesses for under $100,000,000 in order to help the court vibes feel like the cost isn't over the limit. I feel confident I can affordably write a few whitepapers and design guideli…
With 106,000 companies doing this, that’s less than $1,000 each. Do you think that _your_ company could review all of its marketing materials for compliance with a new FTC rule for less than that? How much would you as a consultant charge one of those companies for your assistance? But if you don’t like the rule, talk to your local Congresscritter and ask them to propose a bill to amend or remove it. Complaining abou…
Thanks for the downvote!
I don't have any problem with the rule, which is why you dont see me arguing against it. I'm also not trying to change the laws by commenting on hn so your advice to not comment and instead call my reps comes off as pretty rude.
I do have a problem with the bad faith take of it costing a bunch of money to pay lawyers and data scientists in order to figure out how to "make it possible to cancel" including things like the examples of cancel buttons that literally don't work. Bad faith from the courts to undermine consumer friendly rules is worth discussion.
You may disagree with that and that's fine - happy to see a good faith response from you (but your goalpost moving requirement of updating all marketing doesn't meet the bar for me there) about why that cost might be higher than I expect. That might be an interesting convo.
Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel
#328What 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.
Courts don’t only serve consumers and citizens. They also have to serve corporations. This is not a flippant remark; corporations also have rights to defend.
> This is not a flippant remark; corporations also have rights to defend.
this is Bad, Actually
Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
That... doesn't necessarily work though? If I tried that with my gym, they would send me to collections.
> If I tried that with my gym, they would send me to collections. Let them. I don't know why people let services abuse them like this.
> I don't know why people let services abuse them like this.
One reason is that the negative impact on your credit may end up costing you thousands and thousands of dollars if you e.g. need to get a mortgage
Re: US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel
#330What 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.
This benefits the lawmaker's clients - the large corporations. Or maybe the lawmakers are the clients.
Either way this ruling was bought and paid for.