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US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

(arstechnica.com)
575 points gausswho | 8 comments | 08 Jul 25 22:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.433s | source | bottom
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bpodgursky ◴[09 Jul 25 02:56 UTC] No.44505969[source]▶
From a different article [1]:

> But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit said the FTC erred in its rulemaking process by failing to produce a preliminary regulatory analysis, a statutory requirement for rules whose annual effect on the national economy would exceed $100 million.

> The FTC had argued that it was not required to prepare the preliminary analysis because its initial estimate of the rule’s impact on the national economy was under the $100 million threshold — even though ultimately the presiding officer determined the impact exceeded the threshold.

This is a case where congress really did pass a concrete law, and the court is requiring the FTC to follow it. Sucks that a reasonable rule is getting voided for the sloppiness but I really don't think the courts are indefensibly out of line.

[1] https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5390731-appeals-court-...

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1. sameermanek ◴[09 Jul 25 07:24 UTC] No.44507173[source]▶
Devil is in the details, they said each company would have to pay for less than 23 hrs to a low level engineer to avoid the $100 mil impact.

How much time do you think an intern would need to render a button on screen that says "cancel" in red mapped to an already implemented function in the code base. Especially with trillions poured into the AI?

This is non sense and horse shit, and these bench full of idiots know it

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2. firesteelrain ◴[09 Jul 25 08:02 UTC] No.44507380[source]▶
These “bench full of idiots” are not blind to the fact that there are deceptive practices regarding subscriptions. FTC didn’t do their job right unfortunately and here we are. Now, new administration and it’s doubtful this will get picked up again barring any law passed by Congress.
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3. Dylan16807 ◴[09 Jul 25 09:21 UTC] No.44507874[source]▶
It sounds like they did their job fine. 23 hours on average is plenty. Most companies can do this in 2 hours, and a few of them can spend a lot longer.
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4. jagged-chisel ◴[09 Jul 25 09:34 UTC] No.44507939[source]▶
Your argument presumes that “cost” is “money spent to implement,” when in reality any reduction in predicted revenue is also a “cost.”

The cost of allowing people to cancel subscriptions is more than the cost to implement a button.

5. arzig ◴[09 Jul 25 10:47 UTC] No.44508372[source]▶
There’s a non trivial chance this interacts with credit card processing. There is also app the legal liability of you tell someone meet are cancelled and continue charging them. So probably so not something you trust an intern to do.
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6. fzeroracer ◴[09 Jul 25 11:17 UTC] No.44508603[source]▶
This is stuff that companies already handle with their current cancellation pipelines. Hooking up a short circuit that flags whatever user in their DB as having cancelled is something that I would absolutely toss a junior engineer at and expect them to finish in three or so working days, maybe slightly longer.

The only way it's more onerous than that is if companies have an absolutely shit design under the hood, or they're using malicious compliance to argue that this feature specifically needs eight weeks of planning poker and at least five senior engineers to sign off on each iteration of the design phase.

7. firesteelrain ◴[09 Jul 25 13:11 UTC] No.44509637{3}[source]▶
Sure, 23 hours on average is generous if the goal is honest implementation. But the issue isn’t the time. It is that companies don’t want this button to exist at all. They are not stalling because it's hard; they’re stalling because friction equals profit. That’s why you get weaponized complexity, endless “design reviews” and inflated estimates. The FTC did their job, sort of. They got “cancelled” (hehe) because of a bureaucratic hurdle.

The industry just doesn’t want to play fair.

8. bluGill ◴[09 Jul 25 13:22 UTC] No.44509740[source]▶
Just testing this should take more than 23 hours for non-trivial code. Ship it and pray it works is not a good plan when if the code doesn't work the government will be coming after you.