←back to thread

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

(www.ftc.gov)
1737 points pseudolus | 1 comments | 16 Oct 24 13:09 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
Uehreka ◴[16 Oct 24 15:57 UTC] No.41860626[source]▶
When people try and say that regulating stuff like this is impossible, I often think about how unreasonably great the regulations around “Unsubscribe” links in emails are.

There really seems to be no loophole or workaround despite there being huge incentive for there to be one. Every time I click an “Unsubscribe” link in an email (it seems like they’re forced to say “Unsubscribe” and not use weasel words to hide the link) I’m either immediately unsubscribed from the person who sent me the email, or I’m taken to a page which seemingly MUST have a “remove me from all emails” option.

The level of compliance (and they can’t even do malicious compliance!) with this is absurd. If these new rules work anything like that, they’ll be awesome. Clearly regulating behavior like this is indeed possible.

replies(46): >>41860684 #>>41860824 #>>41860883 #>>41861066 #>>41861129 #>>41861436 #>>41861512 #>>41861678 #>>41861722 #>>41861736 #>>41861811 #>>41861814 #>>41861817 #>>41862226 #>>41862350 #>>41862375 #>>41862533 #>>41862548 #>>41862583 #>>41863105 #>>41863467 #>>41863955 #>>41863981 #>>41864245 #>>41864326 #>>41864554 #>>41864607 #>>41864815 #>>41865404 #>>41865413 #>>41865616 #>>41866082 #>>41866103 #>>41866240 #>>41866351 #>>41866850 #>>41866986 #>>41869062 #>>41869290 #>>41869894 #>>41870054 #>>41870127 #>>41870425 #>>41870478 #>>41871231 #>>41873677 #
digging ◴[16 Oct 24 16:35 UTC] No.41861066[source]▶
I'm super appreciative of what we have, but there's absolutely issues.

CAN-SPAM specifies that the link must be clearly marked and suggests using CSS to do so, but the link is still always going to be at the bottom of the email in the smallest font used. It only matters for those of us who know to look for it; many people just have to live with the spam because they don't know it's easy to unsubscribe.

Sometimes it's not even going to be underlined or distinguished at all (that may be a violation actually but I'm not going to take them to court over it).

There's other dark patterns too, like certain unsubscribe pages requiring you to type/paste your email in to actually complete the process. That is 100% intentional friction, like github making you type the name of a repo into the deletion form. It should also be illegal for unsubscribing.

replies(6): >>41861203 #>>41862978 #>>41864259 #>>41869305 #>>41870238 #>>41882290 #
xboxnolifes ◴[16 Oct 24 19:37 UTC] No.41862978[source]▶
I don't really see putting important links in the footer as anti-pattern. For my entire internet life, many important links were put into the footer of a webpage. Careers, About Us, Contact Us, Locations, Citations, etc. They are expected to be there.

Most emails I get aren't long enough to scroll anyway. Companies generally know people aren't going to read more than maybe a sentence in a given email. I can get to most unsubscribe buttons without even scrolling. If I do scroll, it's like 3 scroll wheel notches.

replies(1): >>41888384 #
1. chiggsy ◴[19 Oct 24 15:32 UTC] No.41888384[source]▶
>I don't really see putting important links in the footer as anti-pattern. For my entire internet life, many important links were put into the footer of a webpage. Careers, About Us, Contact Us, Locations, Citations, etc. They are expected to be there.

Yes, because after a century of public relations and marketing you expect fine print to be in these locations because you have been marketed to from infancy, which has made you apparently, forget that today's dark pattern creators stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before them, and the fact that you expect that stuff to be there is because your worldview has been successfully engineered. Important links under the fold, aka the first page are there to be overlooked. What they want from YOU is top of the page.

>Most emails I get aren't long enough to scroll anyway.

Careful with that kind of thinking, marketing works on everybody. A seed is planted, by appealing to emotional arguments. If it takes root, then your worldview starts to change, via rationalization. The smarter you are, the better and more subtle your rationalizations and better it works.

This project of social engineering was given to a guy named Edwin Bernays, who wrote several very plain and easy to read books on how he was going to do this project. First one was "The Engineering of Consent."