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.
For subscriptions, I highly recommend using disposable cards like Privacy.com (no affiliation, just a customer). If I want to try out Prime, or Starz, or a “free until…” promotional offer, I just spin up a card. It’s connected to my bank account, locked to that single merchant, and they can’t charge more than whatever spending limit I put on that card. Honestly, I don’t always even sign in to a service to cancel, it’s much easier to just pause or delete a card, and then they can’t charge you anymore. It’s free for us because they collect a small portion of the transaction amount (like Visa, PayPal, etc)…
A free trial automatically rolling into a paid subscription.
Shooting plainclothes cops that execute a no-knock warrant on your home.
Seriously.
All states–ALL states–have a castle doctrine that allows you to use lethal defense to protect yourself inside your home. A no-knock warrant being executed by cops out of uniform means that you have a reasonable belief that your home is being invaded, and that your life is at immediate risk. Now, admittedly, you probably aren’t going to survive that exchange of gunfire. But the state is going to have a really hard time charging you with shooting at/killing a cop if you do.
About dozen States do NOT have a castle doctrine, and have duty to retreat laws instead.
No, castle doctrine exists in all states. You do not have a duty to retreat when it’s inside your own home in almost all cases.
police being able to lie to you
I think in the eu we have some legislation about it. I have the feeling of reading about a law like that before. Subscription buttons needing to be as clear as unsubscribe.
Capitalism
Dating sites besieging their users with bots and fake profiles.
I don’t know how this works in the US, but where I live after a year subscription (let’s say for your internet provider or something). They can only renew per month. So if the year subscription is over you can cancel any service every month and they can’t hit you with any fees.
Back in the day if you’d forgot to cancel your plan you’d be stuck with them for another year. It sucked!
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.
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.
Companies changing the terms of the contract on you.
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.
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.
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
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.
And the fact that a lot of children’s TV shows are nothing but thinly veiled toy commercials. Hilariously parodied in Dinosaurs
Worst part is, those are usually the best ones.
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.)
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.
Frogs will not stay in the kettle :)
You can thank Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays
