FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions • Hacker News Board

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#791

Post by Friedduck » Tue, Oct 22, 2024, 12:36 PM UTC

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #96

It would be great to see the FTC go against predatory subscription services like Adobe. I'm fuzzy on the exact details, but I think they promoted a yearly subscription that was meant to look like a monthly subscription, where if you cancelled early they would charge you an exorbitant cancellation fee. I'm not sure how these new rules affect them. One recent idea I've had is that many online subscription services shou…

If you ever deal with elderly parents you’ll learn the full extent of this. It’s shocking how many worthless subscriptions my in-laws had.

Services I’m not sure even exist any longer. An AOL account!

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#792

Post by aspenmayer » Tue, Oct 22, 2024, 8:21 PM UTC

inetknght wrote: post #600

jacobgkau wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m not sure what you expect to happen? They're probably expecting their email provider to take that info and use it somewhere upstream of their own individual account. Which, as you've pointed out, does happen. Maybe they don't believe that it happens often enough or something, but the thresholds do need to be reasonably high since, as you pointed out, some people hit the button whether it's justified or not. If t…

> They're probably expecting their email provider to take that info and use it somewhere upstream of their own individual account. Report spam, as a generic feature? It's an okay starting point "as-is" but useless for preventing malicious use and it hasn't meaningfully improved since launch. Specifically for google: allow users to block whole domains; I can already do that on my own mailserver, why can't I do that on…

> Specifically for google: allow users to block whole domains; I can already do that on my own mailserver, why can't I do that on Google's?

You can do this with filter rules on Gmail:

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/6579?hl=en

This list of Gmail search operators may be helpful in crafting your filter rulesets:

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7190?sjid=11169181429...

You can either search first, then create a filter, or create the filter and then set your specific search terms/scope. The only downside of filters is that they only apply to incoming mail; you can't apply them to already existing mails, but you can use the same search terms as a kind of mask, then use the select all checkbox, then click the link to select all mail that matches the search instead of just selecting all mail on current page/view.

Hopefully that helps.

Re: FTC announces "click-to-cancel" rule making it easier to cancel subscriptions

#793

Post by jodrellblank » Tue, Oct 22, 2024, 11:20 PM UTC

sickofparadox wrote: post #126

jodrellblank wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm downvoting this comment chain because you're just throwing low effort critiques without addressing any of the big points. 1) why is tens of millions of people in a state enforcing the will of the majority on the others fine but hundreds of millions of people in the country enforcing the will of the majority on others "not caring about the consent of the governed" and "the reason democracies fail"? 2) why is it ok…

>why is tens of millions of people in a state enforcing the will of the majority on the others fine but hundreds of millions of people in the country enforcing the will of the majority on others "not caring about the consent of the governed" and "the reason democracies fail"?- Because we aren't a unitary democracy, we are a federal republic that was built upon the idea of a limited federal government designed to addr…

> "A company making it slightly annoying to leave an agreement with them is not being preyed on, exploited, or abused. That kind of language to describe "sitting on the phone longer than I want to cancel my paper subscription" or similar is bordering on histrionic."

This is replying to an objection about forests by saying "how could one object to a single leaf?". This other comment by someone else describes it well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41875283

Company behaviour is sociopathic psychological manipulation. Having to legally force companies to let you leave - if that was a personal relationship that you couldn't leave without the government forcing your partner to let you out of it, it would be an abusive one.