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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

#551

Post by jemmyw »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #529
jemmyw wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wouldn't be the standard capitalist response. After all, you still have the option to spend your money in stupid ways, the ease of cancelling is not related to that. A more standard capitalist response is that this is a market inefficiency. You're spending $20 on the gym, you're not using that service, and so presumably a humble cake maker is missing out on that $20.

Incorrect, strictly speaking I'm spending $20 on the option to visit the gym for a month, just like how you might sound $20 for the option of using Netflix for a month. Options provide value to the purchaser even when they are not exercised. It is a common but grave error to model options the same way one would model a simpler pay-per-usage style service for that reason. We might as well start telling people they can…

But as I noted, there is nothing stopping you keeping that option. It is perfectly fine for you to pay for the option if you want to keep paying for it, even without using it. That is perfectly efficient. The inefficiency is when you want to cancel in order to spend the money elsewhere and you're unable to do so because the subscription is hard to cancel. At that point you no longer want the service, you want to spend your money on cakes, but you cannot.

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

#552

Post by MSFT_Edging »

xphilter wrote: post #198
MSFT_Edging wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When has the US actually overshot left though? There was a short period of social justice awareness, but that didn't translate to actual leftwing economic legislation. Even protests and movements with left wing goals were co-opted by the nominally center-right establishment and neutered. This both-sides stuff gets me, man. Our history is by and large very right wing and every time there's a flutter of left leaning id…

They’re talking about those times we let women vote, implemented social security and got rid of Jim Crow. Really overshot lol.

Ah yes, the period of slightly-less-suffering. What a monumental mistake on all our parts...

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

#553

Post by db48x »

braiamp wrote: post #164
VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The FTC is required to conduct a preliminary regulatory analysis when a rule has an estimated annual economic effect of $100 million or more. The FTC estimated in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that the rule would not have a $100 million effect. > But an administrative law judge later found that the rule's impact surpassed the threshold, observing that compliance costs would exceed $100 million "unless each…

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

Don’t forget that the FTC’s new rules were about a more than just adding a button to your website. You should go read them, but be warned the pdf is 230 pages long.

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

#554

Post by db48x »

fireflash38 wrote: post #177
delfinom wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, after you factor in some of these companies are probably large corps with layers of middle management. It will probably require at least 3 months of premeetings

Which explains the issue with the law neatly: 1. Not pegged at inflation, so the threshold is continually moving downward. 2. All it takes is a couple of bad actor companies to blow out the threshold. If you take the companies at their word, then you will never get under this threshold. Why trust them?

Yes, Congress should probably revisit the threshold. But all thresholds are arbitrary, and for this purpose a hundred million is arguably as good as any. It’s not the end of the world if they only do that every few decades. In fact I would argue that instead of being inflation adjusted, the threshold should be adjusted so that the FTC always has to do a review on some percentage of their new rules. But simplicity has a lot going for it too.

> All it takes is a couple of bad actor companies…

Keep in mind that this threshold is not about bad actors at all. It’s about the impact to the legitimate companies that are not defrauding people at all. The FTC estimated that there were over a hundred thousand companies that would be effected by these new rules, and possibly that there were 5× that. As the judge noted, the implementation cost of these new rules would have to be less than $1000 _per company_ in order for it to be below the threshold. That’s two days of an average engineer’s salary, or even less if they’re getting paid well instead of just average. And since the rules involve more than just adding a button to your webpage the work involved would need to be done by more than just an engineer.

And hitting that threshold is no bad thing, since it just means that the FTC has to allow an extra public comment period with the specific purpose of coming up with alternative rules. If any of those alternative rules would be effective but cheaper to implement then the FTC is supposed to drop their own rules and adopt the alternative rules instead. That keeps the cost down for the legitimate companies while still allowing the FTC to go after the illegitimate ones that aren’t going to bother following the rules anyway.

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

#555

Post by db48x »

VonTum wrote: post #264
guelo wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That commissioner also hated the fact that consumers were going to stop being robbed by big corps.

I find it unproductive to assign emotion to such blatant corruption. I'd rather frame it as "That comissioner sees it to be in his personal best interest to not stop consumers being robbed by big corps."

“The commissioner sees it as important that his government department actually follows the rules as written down by Congress” seems like a fairer interpretation.

Congress literally wrote “You must do X when Y”, and the FTC said “Well, probably Y isn’t true anyway, so we can skip doing X”. It’s true that Y involves an estimate, since there’s no way to calculate the exact number, but their estimate was clearly cooked with the specific purpose of letting them rush.

The new rules seem like good rules, too, so it’s really a shame that they decided that it was more important to rush than to do it right. That makes the old commissioner a bungler at best.

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

#556

Post by Forgeties79 »

zaphar wrote: post #525
Forgeties79 wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that is not my position. I don’t know where you got that from. My position is advocating for healthy, much-deserved skepticism of the current judicial system. More specifically, I am saying that an appeal to some alleged neutrality/objectivity judges are supposed to maintain when carrying out their duty is particularly flimsy in 2025.

I don't know how you advocate for such a thing without holding judges to a standard of neutrality and objectivity and acknowledging/celebrating it when it happens.

I don’t understand what you’re saying anymore. It sounds like you’re agreeing with me? If we have to celebrate when it happens, then that means it’s not a standard expectation. It’s special and worthy of celebration.

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

#557

Post by Tainnor »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #550
Tainnor wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely better in Europe, but certain courts and DPAs (especially the Irish one) are unfortunately known to be incredibly business friendly.

> DPAs (especially the Irish one) are unfortunately known to be incredibly business friendly Can you give me some examples of this please? I think that the core problem for the Irish DPA is that they are woefully under-resourced, and they're up against the biggest companies in the world. Now, one could argue that this is the fault of the government/people and I'd agree with you, but that's a harder thing to change (I…

https://noyb.eu/en/eu-court-irish-dpc-must-investigate-noyb-...

https://archive.ph/20230123014444/https://www.irishtimes.com...

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

#558

Post by codedokode »

bluetidepro wrote: post #337

Slightly related: For all the crap the iOS store gets for many (good) reasons, this is one reason I actually LOVE to buy subscriptions through iOS/Apple when that option is available for a platform. They have the most simple cancellation process to manage all your subscriptions in one place. Sometimes it costs a $1 or more to buy through iOS but it's worth it to easily cancel without any hoops.

In a highly competitive, developed and free US market, why no bank offered this option?

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

#559

Post by [deleted] »

nobody9999 wrote: post #424
singleshot_ wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it’s correct to assert the FTC can’t choose to ignore its enabling act, it’s false to say: 1) the FTC has no say in the laws they are supposed to enforce 2) Congress controls the laws the FTC is tasked with enforcing. As to 1, the FTC writes the laws it enforces. These laws are called regulations. As to 2, of course Congress could write laws that have to be enforced, but when it comes to regulatory agencies, Co…

>Calling for the replacement of a branch of government without understanding any of this would be avoidable with a better educational system. I could be wrong, but IIUC, what GP meant by "If congress is unfit for purpose they should be replaced." Is that we should vote the current congress-critters out of office and replace them with different ones -- who might actually do their job.

[deleted]

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

#560

Post by hexyl_C_gut »

apwell23 wrote: post #510
rsanek wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

once something is in collections, you can negotiate to pay a fraction of the original price. it's actually harder to do so before then. or, you can just not pay even through collections. rarely does it impact credit score (much). lots of kinds of debt even legally can't (eg <$500 medical debt)

> you can negotiate to pay a fraction of the original price. what gives you the negotiating power ? they can simply dock you on your credit report. thats what comcast did to me. they didn't care about negotiating

I think that is how collections work. When a business can't get you to pay they sell the right to collect it to another "collections" business (let's call it Y). Y pays a fraction of the amount owed for the right so even if they can get you to pay like 25%, they are still making a profit.
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