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New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

theguardian.com

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Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#91

Post by ar_lan »

aczerepinski wrote: post #62
gumby wrote: post #16

These rules are great but “landmark” seems like puffery, as California has had such rules for quite a while. Ironically that has meant it’s hard to unsubscribe from the New York Times except in California.

I once wrote code that checks location before hiding/showing the cancel button. It’s really absurd that the nice experience exists on all subscription sites by now but you only get to see it if your state demands it.

I have no context of who you are/your position here, but the responses you're getting seem absurd to me.

I just don't understand people placing the blame on you when it should be on your company. Most people in the world are just trying to keep their job - you did it. It wasn't something illegal, it was something that if you didn't do, you would have risked your job and then someone else would have done it anyway.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#93

Post by rafram »

bijowo1676 wrote: post #81
tamimio wrote: post #78

Should ban the tips if it’s not included in “hidden fees”, and force restaurants to pay proper wages like other workers.

for service workers, up to 25k in tips can be deducted from taxable income ("no tax on tips")

From 2025 to 2028, in a specific list of qualified occupations, as long as your AGI is below $150,000.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#94

Post by woodruffw »

gumby wrote: post #16

These rules are great but “landmark” seems like puffery, as California has had such rules for quite a while. Ironically that has meant it’s hard to unsubscribe from the New York Times except in California.

I think you, as the reader, are expected to mentally append “in NYC” when a link comes from nyc.gov. It seems very silly for a given municipality to need to qualify every sentence on its own website.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#95

Post by quickthrowman »

CSMastermind wrote: post #67

Is this something that cities can really enforce? Like I get that NYC is a bit of an exception but let's say a 5 person town in Wyoming decides that they want to make this practice illegal and they all vote to do so. It's not clear to me that would mean anything at all.

NYC has ~2% of the US population, and it’s a relatively wealthy slice compared to the mean. NYC has roughly 13x as many people as the entire state of Wyoming. I could see a company writing off Wyoming entirely (not likely, but possible) but not NYC.

States like CA, FL, NY, and TX can pass state laws that create defacto national regulations through sheer size, but smaller than that and you’ll have trouble.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#96

Post by jonahx »

nadermx wrote: post #44

The irony with all this, is if a company makes it difficult to cancel their subscription, it's probably not a good product. Antidotically, I've found that making it easy for users to not only cancel, but refund, has given me eye opening things to fix in some products that made it so less people cancelled or refunded. So I try to always err on best user experience.

> Antidotically,

Anecdotally

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#97

Post by mmmattt »

seattle_spring wrote: post #79
tamimio wrote: post #78

Should ban the tips if it’s not included in “hidden fees”, and force restaurants to pay proper wages like other workers.

The "and" is very important here. Places like Seattle now mandate servers get a real wage. It inexplicably hasn't changed tip culture at all, so now they get regular wages and still complain when someone doesn't tip 20%+ for a takeout order.

The mandate stipulates that they can get minimum wage, I wouldn’t call that a “regular” wage, and certainly not a livable one.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#98

Post by henryfjordan »

woodruffw wrote: post #94
gumby wrote: post #16

These rules are great but “landmark” seems like puffery, as California has had such rules for quite a while. Ironically that has meant it’s hard to unsubscribe from the New York Times except in California.

I think you, as the reader, are expected to mentally append “in NYC” when a link comes from nyc.gov. It seems very silly for a given municipality to need to qualify every sentence on its own website.

The municipality is already qualifying the sentence! Instead of "NYC announces click-to-cancel law" they qualify it with "landmark".

I think it's silly for a municipality to lie (by omission?) in their own press announcements.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#99

Post by atonse »

ar_lan wrote: post #91
aczerepinski wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I once wrote code that checks location before hiding/showing the cancel button. It’s really absurd that the nice experience exists on all subscription sites by now but you only get to see it if your state demands it.

I have no context of who you are/your position here, but the responses you're getting seem absurd to me. I just don't understand people placing the blame on you when it should be on your company. Most people in the world are just trying to keep their job - you did it. It wasn't something illegal, it was something that if you didn't do, you would have risked your job and then someone else would have done it anyway.

Exactly. Those low quality comments are an example of the sad erosion of quality of comments on HN that I and others have complained about in recent times.
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