FedditFTC’s click-to-cancel rule has been struck down by federal judges.
www.engadget.com/big-tech/ftcs-click-to-cancel-…
Not surprised, just disappointed. We went from the most pro consumer WH to what is shaping up to be the worst WH for consumer rights in my lifetime.
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Snot FlickermanWe literally cannot have even one nice thing in this country. You best start believin' in cyberpunk dystopias... because you're in one.
Most likely I’ll have to snail mail an unsubscribe to subscription with a check won’t I?
y0kaiI wonder if replying to a "do not reply" email 1000 times a second would have any ill effect in their servers.
KairuByteLikely not. Many times the address doesn’t even have a mailbox, so it immediately bounces. If you reply enough to actually have an effect, you’ll either be blacklisted, or reported as spam.
InternetCitizen2
katy ✨This is the FTC's rule, but nothing prevents each and every state from implementing a law to do the exact same thing, except slightly differently than every other state, making it extremely costly for the companies to implement.
The problem with subscription services is that it's fairly easy to argue it's interstate commerce that states don't have jurisdiction over.
California has the law and visa is based in california. We can push them to make it so that if any site accepts visa they have to follow california's lawn click to cancel. It'll be a nice change from them trying to ban the anime, and do something useful.
States have argued successfully to tax cross state commerce. That's why you get charged local sales tax even when ordering from a company that does not have a presence in your state. I don't see this as any different, but someone will need to go first to set the precedent.
I was really hoping this would go into effect so I could sign up for a gym membership. I'll never sign up with a gym again...Their cancellation processes are offensive and predatory.
The "click-to-cancel" rule would force gyms to allow you to cancel your gym membership as easily as you signed up for it.
For some reason these businesses are against losing the free money they get for making it hard to cancel subscriptions.
It's been a law in Germany for three years now:
For those who worry about this and other services like this, privacy.com is the solution.
You basically create virtual credit cards with an amount limit. At any point you can cancel the credit card and not worry about all the hoops you need to cancel.
This is great advice for signing up for streaming services, and very, very bad advice for a gym membership.
They absolutely will send your delinquent gym membership account to collections and it will wind up on your credit report. It's part of their business plan.
You'd have to sign up with a false identity, which is technically fraud.
Yeah, this is the way to go these days. My bank offers this feature in app, and I have a separate virtual credit card for each service. All I need to do to cancel a service/subscription is to cancel that credit card. Good luck trying to get more money from me. This is especially useful for those "free trials", sign up with a credit card that deletes itself after 24h, and bye bye.
Just for that I'm going to put things in my Amazon and eBay accounts and just keep swapping stuff without buying anything for weeks at a time.
So per the latest Supreme Court ruling, this only applies to that explicit case then, right?.... Right?
Well it's good to know that the courts are willing to tell the executive they can't do things. Shame about it only applying when the feds are helping ordinary people
I'd expect the Spanish inquisition long before I expect the government to do something good for the people.
BombOmOmthe FTC had failed to follow correct procedures and conduct an analysis before issuing the rule
The FTC is free to issue this again. They need to do it in accordance with the law next time.
By no means would we want customers of digital companies to easily cancel. This would remove revenue from the hands of billionaires! Once these services get your credit card they should be able to charge you again and again as long as they'd like. It's a customer's obligation to support billionaires' yatch payments.
- federal judges
That's almost literally the opposite of what the judges actually said.
They specifically called out "the use of unfair and deceptive practices", but ruled the FTC has to follow it's own procedures and, in this case, did not.
Once the FTC follows it's own processes and procedures, it can institute the same policy.
That's like telling cops they must follow the rule of law before they can enforce it. There would be 0 cops doing anything.
No, that's like telling the city government they can't have cops arrest people for a law that hasn't passed council.
Oh my sweet summer child, if only that were what is happening here.
So let's all cut down (or better yet, cut out) subscribing to things. That way we don't need an easy way to cancel and everyone will be happy ... except for the predators that live off of ripping people off with subscriptions.
Gotta love some hard hitting coverage by Engadget, followed immediately by "Best Amazon Prime Day 2025 deals."
I have the same problem with Wired. They have some great content, interspersed with articles that are basically ads for Amazon. Gotta pay the bills I guess.
The sad reality is that good journalism is expensive but no one wants to pay for it.
Even we, the readers who benefit from it, rarely want to actually pay for it.
I think it's kind of a cold start, bootstrap, problem. I don't want to pay for journalism when I don't have faith it'll be good, but since no one's paying for it it's not good
Perhaps. Looks like both CNN and NBC News have "stories" on their front pages as well.
And the "sale" prices are just what they normally were 6 months ago.
It is absolutely hilarious how bad their site is during big daddy's minor sale. An entire week of no news just, "50 cents off this humidifier."
Thank fuck I moved every account I could to one of my credit cards. Won't cancel?
That's fine, broski. I can cancel it from my end lmao 🤣
Except you can't anymore! I just cancelled my American Express and the lady warned me that any pre-existing subscriptions can still be charged to my account... she said I actually have to call the subscription companies to cancel, or they just keep charging and approving the charges I guess? Then I just get a bill from amex I suppose. Seems totally messed up, but they are more interested in protecting business than people. She said they have businesses have lots of protections now.
It's not a huge deal to me as I don't have any subscriptions on that card, but I was taken aback by how aggressive the laws protected business.
I mean chill, my wow subscription isn't legally binding.
Meh, report the card stolen then cancel.
Some banks will do you the “favor” of transferring your automatic payments to your new card. Not sure if/how this applies to credit cards, though.
Corruption in the USA? Perish the thought. /S
I only subscribe to 2 services, my VPN provider and a usenet provider. Everything else turns out to be free.
I keep wanting to sub to a usenet provider, but never have the time to try and figure out which one and such.
No indexer?
Prowlarr handles indexing, I’ve had pretty good luck with free indexers.
Engadget seems to have the least amount of information on this topic. The Ars Technica article went into a lot more detail.
I think this is bad in the short term, but good in the long run. The ruling doesn't stop the FTC from going through the process again for the Click-to-Cancel rule. They just have to follow the correct procedures. In this case they underestimated the annual economic effect that their rule would have, and at a certain threshold they are required to have a preliminary regulatory analysis for a rule.
The administration can weaponize the FTC if they really want to, so the courts ruling that the FTC has to follow the correct procedures helps to at least keep some things in check.
Funny how courts only apply this requirement to agencies when run under Democrats. Meanwhile, RFK is ignoring all basic procedures to stop vaccines, etc...
Oh, don't pretend that a Republican measure is going to be put under the same scrutiny. This is just an easy excuse so to keep people like you placated with a thin veneer of respectability.
The administration is going to weaponize the FTC anyway, and the supreme Court will back THAT to the hilt.
As for economic effect... That isn't something the court should be concerned with anyway! Who cares if it's profitable if it's illegal!
Oh I'm not pretending that at all and I don't see how I implied that in any way. What I'm trying point out is that you'll have precedence on your side when going to court if the FTC does the same thing for a Republican measure.
What do you mean by "people like you?"
I'm not against the click-to-cancel rule, we definitely need something like that.
The court ruling wasn't on the economic effect of the click-to-cancel rule. The ruling was that the FTC skipped their own requirements to make this rule.
By "people like you" I mean people that see this as a good thing. They're picking and choosing what laws this applies to and what they let slide. This is just the "easy out" that prevents "people like you" from being outraged at the blatant corruption going on.
It wasn't meant to be insulting.
What's WH?
Waffle House
Ah, I see. They do seem to waffle on a great deal over there.
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