New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices • Hacker News Board

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#311

Post by esterna » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 3:09 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #142

IshKebab wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

At the end, someone will be there desperate enough to follow the boss's whim. Always. That is why regulation is so important.

Their boss hired GP over others for a reason. The person who is finally desperate enough to do it might be just a little worse at their job, a little more expensive, ... It will have a cost.

German has a related expression "vorrauseilender Gehorsam" (anticipatory obedience), where people will do evil long before they are forced to because of such strategic considerations. You must never rush to give up your morals, there will be plenty of time to do so later.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#312

Post by nixon_why69 » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 3:16 PM UTC

CSMastermind wrote: post #166

quickthrowman wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure but say some company based in Lousiana has a website that violates NYC law. What exactly will NYC do about it? Is there some mechanism to for them to block the website inside of NYC? The company would presumably have no property they could seize or employees they could imprison. If it were a state passing the law then they could sue for enforcement in federal court but I don't think a city could?

I think, in practice, they'll only spend effort enforcing against service companies in the city, he announced the policy at a gym. As a bonus, a bunch of web companies happen to have NYC presence.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#313

Post by AlecSchueler » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 3:24 PM UTC

Teever wrote: post #300

flyingshelf wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part of restaurant fees are the people (both owners and somehow the patrons) that will justify the existence of the fee as if it's too difficult to just print the final price in the menu. I live in a touristy part of the world and effectively all restaurants above baseline level will have a "+7% service +11% tax" line. To me this is clearly deceptive practice.

What happens if a tourist refuses to pay the fee? Or asks for resolution by a neutral third party like law enforcement? Seems like a kind of practice that could quickly become impractical if people simply DDOS it by disputing it.

> if people simply DDOS

DDOS attacks are only "simple" when you can easily coordinate all of the distributed peers. In this case one or two people doing it might be a small annoyance but they're going to have a hard time convincing all the other tourists to turn their trip into a political direct action.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#314

Post by DANmode » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 3:25 PM UTC

nixon_why69 wrote: post #310

59percentmore wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the difference between what he's done and, say, the practice of the people who peddled opioids for a paycheck is one of degree, not kind.

The difference between my sins or your sins and much greater sins is also one of degree, not kind. You never lied or went along with something dubious? At least this person is being honest and reflective.

> You never lied or went along with something dubious?

…no?

Certainly not where it impacted more than just me and one other person.

Why would that be normal?

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#315

Post by p_j_w » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 3:27 PM UTC

Rebelgecko wrote: post #68

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.

Same with websites like Airbnb. Last I checked, their search results only showed the 'real' prices (eg including fees) for certain states and countries. In some states you have to click into the listing before learning that there's an extra $500 cleaning fee on top of the nightly rate :)

> In some states you have to click into the listing before learning that there's an extra $500 cleaning fee on top of the nightly rate :)

And the “house rules” still require you to clean the place before you leave.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#316

Post by dfxm12 » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 3:31 PM UTC

Gigachad wrote: post #218

voidhorse wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mamdani has been doing great in NYC so far. The hope is that he will inspire similar behavior in others. And drive similar approaches to politics in other constituencies.

I'm actually struggling to believe he's done all this stuff. Like it's crazy to see it was possible to fix everything the whole time and all it took was slightly increasing taxes on billionaires and not being corrupt.

It also shows that one election can make a big difference, so it's not hard to understand why R's are making it harder for Americans to vote. Remember that, not just this November, but when primaries roll around too.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#317

Post by SoftTalker » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 3:32 PM UTC

phil21 wrote: post #248

SoftTalker wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. This has only been a thing recently when landlords figured out they could make money selling the insurance. When I was a renter, insurance was never required from me.

It was required in all my boilerplate leases going back to the late 90s. Just rarely if ever enforced or even asked about. You’d just end up with some giant uncollectable judgement against you if you ended up burning down the apartment complex via negligence. Landlords insurance company would potentially come after you, but probably not since it would not be worth their time for most tenants.

The liability limits on most renters insurance policies are low $100Ks, because most renters don't have many assets they need to protect. This would be pretty inconsequential in the scenario of "burning down the apartment complex."

Landlords/owners have their own fire and liability insurance (ultimately paid for by the tenants as part of their rent); it's unnecessary to demand that the tenants provide their own. Renter's insurance is for the tenant's protection, not the landlord's.

My leases always point out that the landlord's insurance does not cover the tenant's personal property or liability, and recommend renter's insurance. But it's not required.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#318

Post by dfxm12 » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 3:35 PM UTC

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.

This is one way how "states rights" types of policies will favor large corporations at our expense. We need strong advocates for regular people at the highest level of law/enforcement. Having advocates at all levels is good, of course.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#319

Post by krapp » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 3:38 PM UTC

aliasxneo wrote: post #171

voidhorse wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mamdani has been doing great in NYC so far. The hope is that he will inspire similar behavior in others. And drive similar approaches to politics in other constituencies.

I'm all for it. Would be great to see exactly how all of his policies play out across a larger area.

I don't think it would be possible without a serious restructuring of the Democratic Party. It's far too beholden to capital and corporate interests and too afraid to be seen as "socialist" to allow someone like Mamdani anywhere near levers of national power.

Re: New York City to ban deceptive subscription practices

#320

Post by Teever » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 3:39 PM UTC

AlecSchueler wrote: post #313

Teever wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens if a tourist refuses to pay the fee? Or asks for resolution by a neutral third party like law enforcement? Seems like a kind of practice that could quickly become impractical if people simply DDOS it by disputing it.

> if people simply DDOS DDOS attacks are only "simple" when you can easily coordinate all of the distributed peers. In this case one or two people doing it might be a small annoyance but they're going to have a hard time convincing all the other tourists to turn their trip into a political direct action.

This is an odd response. I've been to countries that have special tourist police trained in english who frequent tourist locations to prevent this kind of behaviour.

I've never experienced it personally but I've heard stories from other travellers who said that they actually went and got a cop to mediate a despite like this and the cop reamed the merchant out and made him apologize in front of other customers and hand the disputed money back.

Some places understand that perpetuating this kind of fraud against an evergreen pool of tourist marks while lucrative to the individual is ultimately damaging to the whole commons that is the tourist industry for the region.