For me: Cancelling paid subscriptions should be as easy as subscribing. I hate the fact that they actively hide the unsubscribe option or that you sometimes should have to write an e-mail if you want to unsubscribe.
Corporations that don’t pay taxes being allowed to make millions in profit while their employees qualify for welfare because they pay them so little.
What’s worse is those same organisations get corporate welfare (tax breaks) but fight tooth and nail to prevent their workers from getting it.
They should just make it so that whatever they announce as their “earnings” to their stockholders should also be the amount that they are taxed for.
Advertising. At what point did we as a society decide that it was perfectly acceptable for companies to manipulate us - especially children - into buying shit we don’t need and didn’t even want until the ad sold us on it? It’s fucking wild.
Marketing wasn’t really a thing until sometime around the Industrial Revolution and post-WW1. Before then, we didn’t really have the capacity to produce more than what people needed. Marketing basically just consisted of “here’s my product, here’s why it’s superior to others.” But with the post-war boom and the rise in manufacturing, producers were suddenly able to out-produce the demand. So they invented marketing, to get people to buy things that they didn’t actually need. The idea of “create a problem so you can sell the solution” was born.
Yeah I get the history, I’m more commenting on the fact that nobody really said ‘Huh, is this a good idea?’, it just slowly infiltrated everywhere and like the frog in the pot of slowly-boiling water we don’t realize the shit we’re in because of it.
Marketing basically just consisted of “here’s my product, here’s why it’s superior to others.”
That’s what I think advertising ought to be. ‘This product/service exists. Here’s what a panel of independent testers (folks like Consumer Reports) has determined about its functionality, capabilities, etc.’ No music, no slogans, no ‘vibe-n-style’ or whatever, just someone describing the basic facts about the product or service. Because I don’t dispute that I have seen ads for something and been like ‘holy shit this will make my life easier’ or whatever, so I don’t want to not be able to discover products… I just also don’t want to be manipulated by the companies that have a financial incentive to push them.
And the fact that a lot of children’s TV shows are nothing but thinly veiled toy commercials. Hilariously parodied in Dinosaurs
Oh yeah, I grew up in the 70s/80s when that shit became rife. I loved Saturday morning cartoons until I got old enough to realize that they only existed to sell me toys (and to sell ads for other toys.)
Worst part is, those are usually the best ones.
It happened gradually, like frogs in a kettle.
When it was just a guy putting up a sign in front of his smithy it was kind of harmless. Ditto for having a single text-only paper ad for people who are new to town. But, it was a slippery slope.
Yeah that’s kind of my point: society has not stopped to think about the fact that the water is at a full boil and has been for a while. If I had my way ads would just be a basic, boring, ‘This product/service exists, and this is what an independent panel of testers has determined about its functions and capabilities.’ There have definitely been products that were advertised to me that make my life easier and that I use every day, so I don’t want to lose the ability to discover them, I just also don’t want these companies putting their dick in my ass and whispering into my ear that I’m not good enough person as a person if I don’t like it.
Frogs will not stay in the kettle :)
Yes, it’s true. Let me know when a more scientifically accurate idiom comes along, though. I also still use “like a bull in a china shop”.
It was only like 6 months ago I learned that a bull will actually be extremely careful in a china shop (or equivalent) unless its concerned.
Are most of our idioms just wrong?
Hmm. The warfare-related ones are pretty spot on. Wet powder sucks, if you’re not careful your musket can go off half-cocked and ironclads were well armoured. Ditto for taking no prisoners, although we tend to frown on that now.
My guess would be the more practical it would have been at some point, the less likely it started as a misconception.
You can thank Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays
Ordered food at Sonic on their app. After I ordered, it popped up with ads for travel, various credit cards, etc. Completely crazy to me that they’re triple dipping on monetization now (sell me food, sell my data and then sell me other shit while trying to sell me food.)
This is why I use my phone as little as I can get away with, because these companies have built their apps as these little walled gardens where it’s illegal to modify them to block their ads when that’s not the case on a website. Fortunately in my situation there are very few occasions where I have to use my phone or an app for something.
Loaning money to your own political campaign and then paying yourself back, including an interest rate set by you, using donor funds.
There are a number of things that are legal here in the US, which would count as corruption in other places.
Biden administration was working on making that unsubscribe bullshit illegal last year. But then Trump so those tactics will probably be mandatory pretty soon…
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Click to Cancel was put in as a rule, but it requires active enforcement. It also had a 180 day grace period from last October, so it hasn’t even gone into effect yet.
I think email unsubscribe was an existing requirement from a few years ago. Biden’s thing was about unsubscribing from paid services, like Netflix.
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Cunts buying politicians.
Is that not illegal?!
The fucking president has a shitcoin that ppl are using to pay tribute.
The fucking president
… is Coin Operated.
Even before the current fucked up state of affairs, lobbying was (and still is) a thing.
The FTC under Biden was actually craking down on that. It was called the “Click to Cancel” rule, but that was literally a month before the election. :/
Lina Khan was a perhaps once in a lifetime bureaucrat doing good for the people at a rapid pace on normal government timelines and now she’ll probably never get that job or a better one again.
EULAs that say ‘using this <whatever> indicates your acceptance of these terms’. Seems like it ought to be illegal but it’s super common.
Just because they put it in the terms doesn’t it legal.
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You know, I’m not actually sure how binding it is exactly, aside from not totally. It must do something or they wouldn’t bother getting pretend consent.
I just assume it’s legal because it’s so common, you’d think if it was illegal someone would’ve challenged it by now and nobody could put it in their EULAs anymore.
Surprisingly a lot of clauses in EULAS are and get “stricken” (even though this one still stands).
Paying for anything and then being stopped from owning it should be illegal.
What the fuck am I buying software for if not to own it and have my privacy protected while using it?
Fuck EULA’s and the companies trying to push the boundaries of acceptable behaviour 😤 just for a couple extra bucks selling our data to the highest bidder.
100%. If buying isn’t owning then stealing isn’t theft.
Any type of exit fee like account closing. Any costs for leaving should be charges before leaving as part of business costs either at the start or part of monthly or whatever. Leaving should be free.
Looking at you, Adobe.
Companies changing the terms of the contract on you.
Leaving a supermarket without buying anything
That largely depends on what you take with you as you leave.
Dating sites besieging their users with bots and fake profiles.
My car insurance goes up as my car loses value. Years ago you could choose to only insure it up to a certain amount. My kids drove an older car and i designated $10k in insurance for it. That cut the insurance price to about 60%. Texas no longer allows that.
Isn’t most of the insurance for liability? I can see a logic where older cars are less safe, and thus accidents are more likely and would cost more, hence the higher costs. But I’m just guessing.
Collision insurance, the kind that pays for damage to the policy holder’s car in the event of a crash caused by the policy holder or an authorized driver of their car often more than doubles the overall cost of insurance. Collision insurance is usually optional when there’s not a loan.
Your car may lose value, but the cost to repair goes up. Hence the insurance increases. Also the likelihood of a total loss goes up as well.
The insurance will never pay more than the value of the car, so if the repair cost goes too high they’ll just declare it a total loss and pay the “fair market value” of the car. And yes, a total loss is more likely, but that doesn’t mean the insurance pays more, on the contrary, they use that to pay less.
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If the car that totals at $50k costs you $100/mo, that doesn’t drop to $90/mo when the car’s value drops to $45k. It stays the same or goes up.
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A free trial automatically rolling into a paid subscription.
all i’m going to say is whatever shit adobe is pulling because i could yap about this forever with anyone
Which particular part? I’m interested and somewhat outside of the situation.
the fact that they decided to charge $90 a month and $65 to cancel is truly evil
What the fucking fuck, charging to cancel???
adobe has been an evil company since forever i refuse to pay for them especially since it’s easy to crack
In the US, unsubscribing from email spam is legally required to be easy under the CAN-SPAM act. For paid subscription services, I believe they also are required to be as easy to leave as they are to join in the EU and California.
Somewhat related, many dark patterns are treated like fraud.
