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573 points gausswho | 114 comments | | HN request time: 2.314s | source | bottom
1. John23832 ◴[] No.44509670[source]
What consumer does this serve at all? What citizen does this serve at all?

This only serves to allow firms to erect effort barriers to keep rent seeking fro their customers. The "gotcha" that the Khan FTC didn't "follow the rules making process" is parallel construction.

replies(10): >>44509742 #>>44509759 #>>44510095 #>>44510337 #>>44510719 #>>44510834 #>>44511178 #>>44511684 #>>44511936 #>>44516884 #
2. thrance ◴[] No.44509742[source]
It serves the current administration's in-group: the ultra-wealthy.
replies(3): >>44509775 #>>44510082 #>>44512499 #
3. rayiner ◴[] No.44509759[source]
Courts don’t make decisions on whether executive rules are told or bad, serve consumers or not. The main oversight they have is ensuring compliance with procedural rules and statutory technicalities.
replies(5): >>44509943 #>>44510184 #>>44510324 #>>44510810 #>>44511864 #
4. ◴[] No.44509775[source]
5. rayiner ◴[] No.44510046{3}[source]
The non-Federalist Society folks think that “emanations from penumbras” is constitutional law. How can right wing judges even compete with that?

I think we may have drastically different understandings of what “the law” is.

replies(4): >>44510180 #>>44510281 #>>44510387 #>>44510399 #
6. whamlastxmas ◴[] No.44510082[source]
Got a surprise for you if you think any admins in group isn’t the ultra wealthy
replies(2): >>44510222 #>>44510740 #
7. hiAndrewQuinn ◴[] No.44510095[source]
The standard capitalist response would be, it serves the consumer of a service who wouldn't be willing to pay more for the additional guarantee of click-to-cancel.

It doesn't seem that farfetched to me to imagine two sites offering equivalent services, one at $5/month and the other at $6/month, with the only difference being the $6/month site offers click to cancel. This dollar price difference is often the difference between the life and death of a company.

A harsher way of phrasing it would be this serves the consumer who actually pays attention to their bills. I've had a cheap gym membership sitting around for a few months that I haven't gone to. I don't want to go to the effort of cancelling it, because that's hard. My sloth subsidizes the gym goers who actually do use the service every day and pay less than they otherwise would for the privilege. Poor, lazy, stupid people like me should still be given the option to spend our money in poor, lazy, stupid ways.

replies(4): >>44510427 #>>44511072 #>>44512290 #>>44516344 #
8. syntheticcdo ◴[] No.44510180{4}[source]
Note that the court case that first invoked “emanations from penumbras” involved a Connecticut law banning the the use of contraceptives. Do you believe such a restriction should be constitutional?
replies(1): >>44510420 #
9. Devasta ◴[] No.44510184[source]
That hasn't been true this century at the very least.
10. XorNot ◴[] No.44510222{3}[source]
"this paper cut is exactly the same as sticking my arm in a wood chipper, which is why I chose the latter..."
11. ◴[] No.44510281{4}[source]
12. cogman10 ◴[] No.44510324[source]
Yeah, I take a dim view of the courts in general these days. However, this looks black and white. The FTC was trying to rush in the change before Trump took office and that backfired on them.

Now, the rule is good. There is no reason why the current FTC shouldn't implement it. It literally harms nobody except for businesses addicted to dark patterns.

replies(2): >>44513829 #>>44517297 #
13. giingyui ◴[] No.44510337[source]
Courts don’t only serve consumers and citizens. They also have to serve corporations. This is not a flippant remark; corporations also have rights to defend.
replies(3): >>44510626 #>>44510646 #>>44511137 #
14. hobs ◴[] No.44510387{4}[source]
Yes of course, bringing up a whataboutism while the supreme court runs roughshod over current law is totally the point right? We need these stout champions of conservatism because the left is so crazy that we need to check them, that's why we need to rewrite the constitution to fit whatever trump is doing this week, right?

Bringing up the boogieman of the left while the right is literally doing their best to bring the law under their heels permanently is pretty rich.

replies(3): >>44510467 #>>44511265 #>>44514259 #
15. martythemaniak ◴[] No.44510399{4}[source]
Yeah, those crazy woke judges that think that the government should not be able to bust into your bedroom and arrest you because you used a condom.
replies(2): >>44510429 #>>44510453 #
16. rayiner ◴[] No.44510420{5}[source]
If we’re talking about what “should be constitutional,” we’re no longer talking about “the law” but instead policy or philosophy.

Regulating the “public health, welfare, and morals” is the prerogative of state legislatures. So the question is whether there is anything in the constitution that overrides that general power. Resort to “emanations from penumbras” is a concession that there isn’t.

By the way, this isn’t even some U.S.-centric take. The constitutional law in most western democracies leaves regulation of drugs to the discretion of the legislature.

replies(2): >>44511186 #>>44525401 #
17. cogman10 ◴[] No.44510427[source]
The issue with this argument is that services follow industry standards. You can't find me a single example of two competing services, one with click to cancel and the other without, in the same industry.

Companies pay attention to what their competitors are doing. If everyone is doing it, they'll happily go along with it.

The other issue is that if these things are guaranteed in law, they have a nasty habit of simply disappearing. A great example of that is ads in paid streaming services. In the beginning, you paid for the service and no ads. But then hulu came along and had ad content for the lower tier. That started a chain reaction on the other streaming platforms where now they all do ads for paid content. They are even toying with not allowing a higher payment to opt out of ads (which will likely come).

Click to cancel would be the same way. You might sign up for something with a click to cancel feature, there is absolutely nothing from stopping a company from quietly removing that option. Just like nothing has stopped companies from requiring phone calls, at the right time, in the right manor, and with a 20 step Q/A retention process. Bad enough that you can now pay people to sit through retention processes to cancel for you.

replies(2): >>44510695 #>>44512440 #
18. rayiner ◴[] No.44510429{5}[source]
“The law” as most people understand it allows the government to regulate the sale and use of medical products. There’s a libertarian reading of the constitution under which Griswold makes sense. But under it, the FDA is probably unconstitutional.
replies(1): >>44514284 #
19. rayiner ◴[] No.44510467{5}[source]
After we have 60 years of Federalist Society judges looking for what they can find in the “emanations from penumbras” of the second amendment and INA, maybe then I’ll care about the accusation of hypocrisy.
20. michaelsshaw ◴[] No.44510473{4}[source]
I wouldn't describe any member of our current court system as "the best"
replies(1): >>44513211 #
21. nkrisc ◴[] No.44510521{4}[source]
There many ways in which the US is not “the best”. That should be obvious to any American, it’s not hard for us to see if you’re looking for it.
22. sophacles ◴[] No.44510626[source]
Who the fuck cares? Seriously - a corporation is a piece of paper that separates ownership from responsibility. It's already a fucking stupid idea - You're deeply liable if you can't keep you trees maintained, or your car under control, but if you can't control you company, it's no problem?

We hand out these get-out-of-trouble cards to the type of useless trash that destroy lives (see pollution, workplace safety, dangerous products knowingly misadvertised as healthy, etc), let those disgusting shareholders profit, and then use tax dollars to cover the bill (if anyone does). Now you wan them to have rights on top of the special treatment? How about instead we do something that is sane, something that doesn't make a handful of people extremely powerful, and doesn't make millions of sad, pathetic tools who just want to pretend they matter complicit? How about we say, "Look if you want special protection, you have to follow these rules that limit the damage you do. If you want to do those damaging actions, you can be responsible", and put in a bunch of rules that stop these specially protected investors from profiting off other's suffering.

tl;dr - it's an incredibly stupid and ultimately harmful position that a paper granting special privileges has rights. Corporations are no more entitled to profit than anyone else, privileges should come with responsiblities equal to them.

replies(1): >>44511758 #
23. jonathanlb ◴[] No.44510646[source]
In theory, courts don't "serve" anyone, but they do serve the rule of law. Courts _should_ remain impartial. Given this, it's problematic when the rule of law favors corporations over consumer interests, e.g. Federal Arbitration Act, Citizens United, thanks to corporate lobbying.
24. hiAndrewQuinn ◴[] No.44510695{3}[source]
> You can't find me a single example of two competing services, one with click to cancel and the other without, in the same industry.

We can get pretty close. Take Adobe versus Affinity. Same industry, very similar product suites, but totally different pricing strategies, and Adobe makes cancellation much more annoying.

There are plenty of examples of this if you keep your eyes open. I'm pretty sure the only reason I don't have an exact example to give you is because I'm under NDA and I don't watch most consumer retail enough to know.

>Companies pay attention to what their competitors are doing. If everyone is doing it, they'll happily go along with it.

Tacit collusion becomes exponentially more difficult to maintain in any market with more than a handful of players. A different pricing strategy is one of the easiest ways to counterposition against an incumbent there is. It's part of how SaaS toppled bubble wrap CDs in the first place.

That can be lower pricing with the same model, or it can be a one time purchase versus a subscription, or it can be a hard to cancel but very cheap subscription over a very expensive one time purchase.

> In the beginning, you paid for the service and no ads. But then hulu came along and had ad content for the lower tier. That started a chain reaction on the other streaming platforms where now they all do ads for paid content.

People are more willing to pay $10 per month with ads than $12 per month without ads. I don't find that especially shocking. The market figures out what people actually want, not what people say they want.

Say it were not so. Then we would see some Netflix renegades start a new streaming platform that is Ad Free Again™ and only a tiny bit more expensive than the competitors, and most consumers would switch. It's not impossible, but I haven't seen that happen yet.

>You might sign up for something with a click to cancel feature, there is absolutely nothing from stopping a company from quietly removing that option.

If I care enough about the feature and this price differential, I'll notice this and eventually go through the aggravation of cancelling to switch to a new, slightly higher priced service which does have click to cancel. I paid more for the easy cancellation promise and when it was revoked the service became less valuable to me. Whatever, it was fun while it lasted. A monthly subscription to Netflix is not a marriage, and it is not an investment.

25. libraryatnight ◴[] No.44510719[source]
A significant portion of this community believes in "move fast and break things," but just for businesses, when it comes to helping people - slow down!
replies(1): >>44511049 #
26. platevoltage ◴[] No.44510740{3}[source]
“It’s like a uniparty bruh”
replies(1): >>44511318 #
27. duped ◴[] No.44510810[source]
Upon plain inspection, this is untrue.
replies(1): >>44515782 #
28. caesil ◴[] No.44510834[source]
If you actually bother to click through and read the article, you'd find the court expressed sympathies with the intent of the rule, but the FTC "is required to conduct a preliminary regulatory analysis when a rule has an estimated annual economic effect of $100 million or more", and they did not do that.

The blame here belongs to the FTC for its rushed and sloppy process that put the rule on shaky ground legally.

replies(11): >>44510991 #>>44511010 #>>44511221 #>>44511297 #>>44511415 #>>44512154 #>>44512286 #>>44512289 #>>44514076 #>>44514547 #>>44518196 #
29. julienchastang ◴[] No.44510991[source]
> "If you actually bother to click through and read the article,"

HN guidelines ask that you say "The article mentions that".[0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

replies(1): >>44511248 #
30. exabrial ◴[] No.44511010[source]
^ This.

A shoddy implementation would just mean later problems. Hopefully the FTC gets the memo and does it "the right way" to make it watertight, otherwise people will just get away with doing whatever they want.

31. Herring ◴[] No.44511049[source]
To be fair, helping people like them is deadly to your community. That's what theyre signalling, and I think they might have a point. You can't just give people money (power) because they're poor - look at Latinos voting for Trump. Their ethics have to also be right.
32. GolfPopper ◴[] No.44511072[source]
What's described here is really just legalized thievery with extra steps. "We make it difficult to stop paying us" versus "we charge extra for the privilege of not making it difficult to stop paying us" is just fraud versus extortion. That one or both may be technically legal is no excuse.
replies(1): >>44511929 #
33. GuinansEyebrows ◴[] No.44511137[source]
> This is not a flippant remark; corporations also have rights to defend.

this is Bad, Actually

34. NickC25 ◴[] No.44511178[source]
This benefits the lawmaker's clients - the large corporations. Or maybe the lawmakers are the clients.

Either way this ruling was bought and paid for.

35. syntheticcdo ◴[] No.44511186{6}[source]
I'm asking about your personal opinion: in Griswold v. Connecticut should the Supreme Court have upheld states right to ban access to all contraceptives, including condoms?
replies(2): >>44513823 #>>44514202 #
36. pessimizer ◴[] No.44511265{5}[source]
> bringing up a whataboutism

This is red-baiting.

> while the supreme court runs roughshod over current law

This is question-begging.

> We need these stout champions of conservatism because the left is so crazy that we need to check them, that's why we need to rewrite the constitution to fit whatever trump is doing this week, right?

This is straw-manning.

37. fumeux_fume ◴[] No.44511297[source]
This is a pretty narrow view. A lot of businesses--whose bread and butter (well maybe just the butter) is keeping people locked into subscriptions they don't want--put a large effort in challenging this rule. They would have fought it like hell during the "analysis" which would have stretched into the Trump presidency were it would surely would have been killed. Even if the analysis had been completed, it's likely the courts would have struck it down for overreach (like Dept of Education's student loan forgiveness). It died because a lot business interests are opposed to it.
replies(1): >>44511412 #
38. pessimizer ◴[] No.44511318{4}[source]
Actually Republicans are like demons and Democrats are like angels, which is why their policies are so distinct. I am very sophisticated.
replies(1): >>44512198 #
39. pessimizer ◴[] No.44511412{3}[source]
I don't know what you mean by "narrow" here. It sounds like you're saying that they did it at the last minute, and failed to finish. But you're saying that since the next administration would "surely" never do click to cancel, that somehow should immunize the FTC from following their own regulations? The next administration was elected.

The reason they have to do studies is so they can't rush things through. We don't want them to be able to rush things through. They're creating law.

40. rtkwe ◴[] No.44511415[source]
Depends on how accurate you think the >$100 million estimated impact from the lower court is. When the FTC did the analysis they came up with a lower impact so they didn't have to do it. I'd be more willing to believe they got it right than a single judge did.
replies(4): >>44511710 #>>44512060 #>>44512807 #>>44512880 #
41. derektank ◴[] No.44511684[source]
People are served by knowing that, regardless of what the law says, it will be applied consistently. It's on the legislature to write new law if the old law is bad, not the judiciary.
replies(3): >>44512109 #>>44512554 #>>44514127 #
42. zaphar ◴[] No.44511710{3}[source]
Why do you think the FTC analysis was more accurate than the opposing sides? The judges, of whom there were multiple, were going off of opposing side argumentation not just their own subjective opinion. That's how courts in the US work.
replies(2): >>44511952 #>>44512420 #
43. zaphar ◴[] No.44511758{3}[source]
Then get legislation through congress to change it. The courts are not there to fix legislation unless it is superseded by other higher legal authorities. Such as the constitution national or state. Current legislation gives them corporations rights. If you think that is wrong then the way to change it is to get people elected who can change that legislation.
replies(1): >>44513283 #
44. dontlikeyoueith ◴[] No.44511864[source]
> Courts don’t make decisions on whether executive rules are told or bad, serve consumers or not

This is just an obvious lie.

They're not supposed to, but they obviously do. Usually against common citizens' interest.

replies(1): >>44513685 #
45. hiAndrewQuinn ◴[] No.44511929{3}[source]
It's not legalized thievery to make it nonfree to exit a contract you voluntarily signed up for in the first place. That's ridiculous and hyperbolic.

People do it all the time, at all levels of scale and severity. You might as well take issue with the US government not having a "click to cancel" option on NATO or something.

replies(3): >>44512134 #>>44512760 #>>44512823 #
46. barbazoo ◴[] No.44511936[source]
Companies are people too! And after all they are the biggest donors so this actually serves exactly who it's supposed to.
47. barbazoo ◴[] No.44511956{4}[source]
Two wrongs don't make a right.
replies(2): >>44512167 #>>44512229 #
48. trealira ◴[] No.44511975{5}[source]
More important than the Heritage Foundation is the Federalist Society in the case of getting more conservative judges.
replies(1): >>44512043 #
49. zaphar ◴[] No.44512040{5}[source]
Can you point to specific examples where the courts interpretation and reasoning wasn't rooted in the law and the arguments from the lawyers in the court specificall? Because I can't. I might disagree with some of the opinions but I can't point to anything where they were clearly not basing it on the law and the various lawyer's argumentation.
replies(1): >>44512061 #
50. BolexNOLA ◴[] No.44512043{6}[source]
Good catch. That whole pipeline is very robust too - I remember mocking the Burke society folks in college, not realizing at all that they were figuring out who was headed to work with federal judges/think tanks for the next generation.
51. vkou ◴[] No.44512060{3}[source]
Why would this have any economic impact? These dark patterns don't generate any net value, they just move money from one pocket to another. The money will be spent somewhere else, instead.
replies(3): >>44512372 #>>44512509 #>>44523714 #
52. BolexNOLA ◴[] No.44512061{6}[source]
That request is a trap and can’t be satisfied. Any answer can be hand waved away with ease. It’s vague yet restrictive.
replies(1): >>44512163 #
53. black6 ◴[] No.44512109[source]
In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.

Anatole France

54. ◴[] No.44512134{4}[source]
55. John23832 ◴[] No.44512154[source]
I read the article. It is how I was able to reference the "gotcha".
56. zaphar ◴[] No.44512163{7}[source]
If that request is a trap then you have basically made my point for me I guess.
replies(1): >>44512261 #
57. thrance ◴[] No.44512198{5}[source]
Can you seriously compare the administration building concentration camps, cutting medicare for 12 millions people (effectively killing a lot of them) and dooming America's future through insane spending to the previous administration?

I do not hold the democrats in my heart but claiming they're "both equally bad" is absolutely ludicrous.

58. ◴[] No.44512229{5}[source]
59. BolexNOLA ◴[] No.44512261{8}[source]
If you believe the judges are all being as objective as possible and that the systemic flaws in our judicial system are not being exploited by the Trump admin/lawyers representing the Trump admin without pushback from said judges than you can’t be convinced by me. I can cite an example, and if you aren’t personally convinced you can simply say “the court of law said x was innocent or y was held liable” or whatever you consider the correct arbiter.

You can appeal to the system that I am actively saying is not working but you get the benefit of “well the law/eatablishment says so.” You can lean on your opinion or the results, whichever serves you better, in a way I can’t as you cite the case itself. The entire discussion is poisoned out the gate.

replies(1): >>44512399 #
60. AndrewKemendo ◴[] No.44512286[source]
Why are you carrying water for this?

The FTC didn’t make that rule.

Who do you think created that rule that anything that lost money for advertisers? I’ll give you one guess

The fact that you’re indignant that someone doesn’t agree with the argument is absolutely absurd.

The law/rule constraint was corrupt from the outset in order to provide multiple avenues for capital to ensure they don’t lose their profits.

replies(2): >>44512377 #>>44513181 #
61. standardUser ◴[] No.44512289[source]
> you'd find the court expressed sympathies with the intent of the rule

And you'd find such sentiments to be completely worthless, except insofar as they act as cover for a ruling on a technicality in favor of the same corporate interests that fund the politicians that appointed these judges.

replies(2): >>44512670 #>>44513157 #
62. rtkwe ◴[] No.44512372{4}[source]
The economic impact here is only factoring in how much it would cost companies to comply with the measure which is inherently designed to give an extra hurdle by not counting the money saved by consumers not trapped by dark cancellation patterns.
replies(1): >>44516961 #
63. wahnfrieden ◴[] No.44512377{3}[source]
Tidy logical explanations of rule systems that click for people are very powerful when they come from authority. There’s a comfort in this sort of bureaucracy that appears to have taken broad considerations to protect us from complex dangers and second order effects.
64. zaphar ◴[] No.44512399{9}[source]
Is your entire position that government doesn't work so we should get rid of it? Or do you have proposals for actual ways to improve it?
replies(1): >>44514251 #
65. rtkwe ◴[] No.44512420{4}[source]
The companies suing to stop this have every reason to massively inflate the difficulty and cost of compliance to continue their long established dark patterns of trapping people in difficult to cancel subscriptions. Judges are not experts in the field and have a hard time evaluating the actual credibility of various presented estimates, you see it all the time with long debunked forensic evidence techniques being accepted still years later by judges and courts.
replies(1): >>44512642 #
66. mgkimsal ◴[] No.44512440{3}[source]
> You can't find me a single example of two competing services, one with click to cancel and the other without, in the same industry.

It's not click to cancel, but... airlines will charge extra for the right to cancel with a refund. Cheapest ticket is non-refundable, higher priced in refundable. But these are finite resources - seats, dates/times, etc. Not infinite capacity SaaS platforms.

67. marcusverus ◴[] No.44512499[source]
Why would the ultra-wealthy be this administration's in-group? Trump won voters with under 100K income, while Harris won those over 100K.[0] Among high-net-worth individuals, Harris had a 10 point lead among those with $1-5mm in net worth and a ~2 point lead with those >$5m, according to the only polling I could find that specifically targeted high-net-worth individuals.[1] It's possible that the "ultra-wealthy" buck this trend, but I haven't seen any data that suggest such a thing.

[0] https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-2024

[1]https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...

replies(1): >>44512924 #
68. FuriouslyAdrift ◴[] No.44512509{4}[source]
Compliance and enforcement costs
69. fkyoureadthedoc ◴[] No.44512539{6}[source]
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Sorry bro I had to

replies(1): >>44512560 #
70. jfengel ◴[] No.44512554[source]
That would ring less hollow if there were any way for the legislature to actually write laws. Congress writes vanishingly little non-trivial legislation, because every proposal has to be viewed in terms of political benefit.

I don't think people feel well served by knowing that bad laws will last forever. The civil service was supposed to be a non-partisan way to manage the country efficiently. It does not do me any good to say "No, you are stuck with the inefficient system, and you should feel good about that because at least it's written down."

71. mh- ◴[] No.44512560{7}[source]
Hah, totally deserved. I honestly almost added at the end that if I could flag my own comments in this thread they'd be deserving of it, too.
72. skybrian ◴[] No.44512642{5}[source]
To figure out who's right, we would need to do research, rather than choosing the judges versus the FTC based on vibes.

I'm hardly going to do that research myself, so I have no opinion. There are legal bloggers whose opinions I'd respect. I assume comments on Hacker News are no more informed than my own, unless they show they have relevant expertise.

73. epgui ◴[] No.44512670{3}[source]
Ruling on technicalities is their job. I don't like the outcome either, but they did their job and they did it well.
replies(1): >>44512999 #
74. GolfPopper ◴[] No.44512760{4}[source]
A contract requires a 'meeting of the minds'. Artificially inflating the practicalities of canceling (exiting the contract in accordance with the contract) so as to extract more money from one party fails that test.

This isn't about cancellation fees, a fixed-term commitment, or anything of the sort. It's agreeing that "you can cancel by filling out the form" without mentioning that to get the form you need to climb down into an unlit basement, and find the form in a maze of unlabeled filing cabinets while evading the guard leopard.

replies(1): >>44513733 #
75. Glyptodon ◴[] No.44512807{3}[source]
The main reason I think the court got it right is that with ~33 million businesses in the US you could argue that sending every business an email would cost them >$100 mil in just labor cost if they forward it a few times and several employees spend a reasonable amount of time reading it.
replies(1): >>44512875 #
76. TheCoelacanth ◴[] No.44512823{4}[source]
If it was an actual contract that you signed, then I might agree, but this is just clicking a button on a website. That type of "contract" should be sharply limited in what terms it can include.
replies(1): >>44513790 #
77. blacksmith_tb ◴[] No.44512875{4}[source]
Luckily not all 33M of those businesses are wringing subscriptions out of their customers (yet), so it might be fairer if we could narrow it down to the subset who do?

What's more interesting to me is the court is basically admitting that doing the right thing for customers will cost unscrupulous businesses more than $100M they're currently fleecing those customers for, so they won't let this go ahead.

replies(1): >>44516935 #
78. kristianbrigman ◴[] No.44512880{3}[source]
Why does it matter? As far as I can tell () the law asks the FTC to do an estimate, they did, and now the argument was ‘some one else thinks it’s wrong’. But does the law require an actual estimate?

If they are worried about this… either mandate some third party do the estimate, or mandate the study. This is just confusing.

() - of course I haven’t read the actual law or ruling yet…

replies(1): >>44523962 #
79. TheCoelacanth ◴[] No.44512924{3}[source]
Trying to extrapolate the behavior of people with $100 billion from the behavior of people with $5 million is clearly nonsense. That's as big of a difference as between someone who makes $20 million per year and someone at the global extreme poverty line of $2.66 per day.

Of the five richest people in the world, 80% were personally sitting right behind Trump at his inauguration.

replies(1): >>44513277 #
80. ◴[] No.44512999{4}[source]
81. cortesoft ◴[] No.44513157{3}[source]
If we don’t want rulings based on technicalities, then don’t put technicalities into the law.
82. jakeydus ◴[] No.44513181{3}[source]
Sure, but that's a different argument. OP wasn't carrying water for the companies that would be affected by this change, they were carrying water for the rule of law. If the FTC had sued saying that the $100M limit was too restricting and had no valid basis, then sure, this would be a valid argument. But the judges have to rule on the law as it's written, not as HN commenters would like it to be. Is the law wrong? Corrupt? Maybe! But that's a different conversation.

Believe me, I'm incredibly disappointed that this didn't work. I paid a Planet Fitness membership for a year after I had moved to a place too far away from any PF location to reasonably use it, just because the cancellation process was so convoluted that it took me ages to figure out how to cancel. I think that companies should be held liable when they employ predatory business practices like this. I agree with your premise, that the limit is too low and there's nothing to stop companies from lying about the cost to implement the rule. But the law is the law is the law is the law. Courts exist to interpret the law, and in this case, the law they were asked to interpret was whether the FTC had abided by the $100M cap. They found reasonable justification to rule that they had not.

Again, I get the desire to be up in arms over this. But recent events have shown just how fragile our legal system is when people decide that the rules can just be ignored, and I wish that people would be more hesitant to throw the baby out with the bathwater, even when doing so would mean I wouldn't have to pay planet fitness $20/mo for a year.

83. sssilver ◴[] No.44513277{4}[source]
More like “five richest people in the US according to their tax returns”. Nobody has counted the money of the Saudi Prince, the president of Russia, and a few dozen other characters like these.

Intuitively it feels like their wealth would eclipse Elon Musk.

84. sophacles ◴[] No.44513283{4}[source]
One of the key steps to get Congress to change things is to first get support from voters for the change.
85. ◴[] No.44513685{3}[source]
86. hiAndrewQuinn ◴[] No.44513733{5}[source]
Of course this is about cancellation fees. There are so many companies which specialize in hiring leopard tamers to go down into those very basements, photocopy those very forms, and sell them at the front door for a nominal fee. They're like 20% of all my YouTube ads.

You're always paying a fee somewhere to hedge against cancellation risk somewhere in the system. There is no free lunch. It's either going to be in the asking price or at the tail end. You can force everyone to raise their asking price and hence price millions of people out of Netflix for every $1/month you go up, or you can let people self-select.

87. hiAndrewQuinn ◴[] No.44513790{5}[source]
It is generally an actual contract. When you sign up for a service like Netflix, you are agreeing to a legally binding document, outlined in a document commonly known as "Terms of Use" or "Terms of Service." To artificially limit this contract would be to impede freedom of trade, which generally leaves everyone worse off, not better.
replies(1): >>44513867 #
88. rayiner ◴[] No.44513823{7}[source]
Your question asks whether I “believe such a restriction should be constitutional.” I’m obviously not in a place to decide what “should” or “should not” be in the constitution—the document is what it is.

If your question is whether I think the Griswold was correctly decided, the answer is obviously not. Regulating access to medications obviously falls within the police power of state governments, and I don’t think the constitution has a special carve out for particular types of medications. In fact I think this was an extraordinarily easy case as a legal matter, and the fact that the Supreme Court got it wrong demonstrates how intellectually sloppy a lot of mid-20th century precedent was.

89. magicalist ◴[] No.44513829{3}[source]
> There is no reason why the current FTC shouldn't implement it. It literally harms nobody except for businesses addicted to dark patterns.

Well:

> The FTC issued the proposal in March 2023 and voted 3-2 to approve the rule in October 2024, with Republican Commissioners Melissa Holyoak and Andrew Ferguson voting against it. Ferguson is now chairman of the FTC, which has consisted only of Republicans since Trump fired the two Democrats who remained after Khan's departure.

90. TheCoelacanth ◴[] No.44513867{6}[source]
Freedom to trick unsophisticated consumers with giant stacks of legalese is not a freedom worth preserving.
91. pavon ◴[] No.44514076[source]
In this case, I'm guessing the FTC knew it was a long shot and took the Hail Mary pass anyway. If they had done the preliminary regulatory analysis the ruling wouldn't have been completed during the Biden administration. So they gambled that it would be better to take their chances with the courts than with the next administration, given both Republican commissioners voted against the rule. Which makes this less of a disappointment to me that it would otherwise.
92. tshaddox ◴[] No.44514127[source]
I would prefer judges to settle disputes fairly, rather than say "I've been given the authority to settle this dispute and I'm going to settle it in a way that I think is unfair because of some alleged rules about how I'm supposed to make my decisions."
93. CWuestefeld ◴[] No.44514202{7}[source]
Griswold found a person has a right to decide, together with their doctor, what course of medical treatment is best for their particular needs.

Do you support that right at all beyond contraception (and abortion)? For example, do you support my doctor's right to prescribe to me all the pain medication that he and I think is appropriate for my painful, terminal disease? Or to prescribe me LSD or other hallucinogens to treat my PTSD?

It seems to me that Griswold should be invalidating most of the role of the FDA, except in an advisory capacity. But I don't think that's what most people who were aghast at overturning Roe believe.

Would you have been willing to allow, say, Texas or Tennessee, to decide that their resident doctors could tell their patients that there was no need for taking the COVID-19 vaccine, or to wear masks, or social-distance; and there could be no repercussions against patients for exercising those rights?

Support for the arguments Roe was based on seems to be highly dependent on where you want to apply those arguments. That doesn't seem very intellectually honest.

replies(1): >>44515817 #
94. BolexNOLA ◴[] No.44514251{10}[source]
No, that is not my position. I don’t know where you got that from. My position is advocating for healthy, much-deserved skepticism of the current judicial system. More specifically, I am saying that an appeal to some alleged neutrality/objectivity judges are supposed to maintain when carrying out their duty is particularly flimsy in 2025.
replies(1): >>44515976 #
95. CWuestefeld ◴[] No.44514259{5}[source]
While I, too, think that Trump has gone off the rails, pre-Trump history is very different from what you're implying.

Historically, it's been the position of the Left that the Constitution should be treated as a "living document" to be interpreted in context of the needs of the times. It's been the Right who have rejected such interpretations and insisted on "originalist" or "textualist" interpretations of the document.

Now, Trump and other politicians are bags of wind who say whatever is expedient. But if you look at the Courts and what they've done for the past half-century, it should be clear that the work of the Federalist Society and the justices they've cultivated really has been in that originalist/textualist vein, and it's been the Liberal justices who have strained interpretations of the Constitution.

The Left idea that we need to hew to the Constitution is a VERY new change in American politics. And from where I sit it seems rather disingenuously targeted solely at defeating Trump. I'm not seeing anybody on the left saying, "you were right about the 2nd Amendment, and we should all be critical of California and Illinois and NYC for trying repeatedly to circumvent the courts' orders."

96. CWuestefeld ◴[] No.44514284{6}[source]
Thanks for saying more concisely what I was trying to convey here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44514202
replies(1): >>44515826 #
97. didibus ◴[] No.44514547[source]
I don't understand, they did an estimate and found it below 100$ million. That seems to have followed the process. An estimate can always be challenged and is just a best effort prediction. Now it seems this create a pretty flaky ground for precedence that the FTC simply can never estimate less than 100$ million as it could always be challenged in court, what if it was more? And they now have to always follow the more effortful process of assuming it is more than 100$ million.

It really seems like a weird line in the sand that the court will just randomly decide on a case by case now, with the FTC having no way to know if the court will agree with their estimate or not.

98. rayiner ◴[] No.44515782{3}[source]
In the specific context of courts reviewing administrative agency rules, it’s largely true.
99. ◴[] No.44515817{8}[source]
100. rayiner ◴[] No.44515826{7}[source]
I thought that comment was an excellent summary.
101. zaphar ◴[] No.44515976{11}[source]
I don't know how you advocate for such a thing without holding judges to a standard of neutrality and objectivity and acknowledging/celebrating it when it happens.
replies(1): >>44520733 #
102. jemmyw ◴[] No.44516344[source]
That wouldn't be the standard capitalist response. After all, you still have the option to spend your money in stupid ways, the ease of cancelling is not related to that. A more standard capitalist response is that this is a market inefficiency. You're spending $20 on the gym, you're not using that service, and so presumably a humble cake maker is missing out on that $20.
replies(1): >>44516519 #
103. hiAndrewQuinn ◴[] No.44516519{3}[source]
Incorrect, strictly speaking I'm spending $20 on the option to visit the gym for a month, just like how you might sound $20 for the option of using Netflix for a month.

Options provide value to the purchaser even when they are not exercised. It is a common but grave error to model options the same way one would model a simpler pay-per-usage style service for that reason. We might as well start telling people they can't buy monthly bus passes if they don't use them every day.

replies(1): >>44519537 #
104. mbac32768 ◴[] No.44516884[source]
If there are at least 10,000 subscription services in the US and they will spend at least $10,000 to figure out if and how to comply with a click to cancel requirement (feel free to move zeros from one number to the other), the law says they must be allowed to at least have their comments heard before it's implemented. This comment opportunity was not provided.

The regulator said it didn't reach $100 million, so there was no need. The court said bs, this would cost at least that much

105. db48x ◴[] No.44516935{5}[source]
> Luckily not all 33M of those businesses are wringing subscriptions out of their customers (yet), so it might be fairer if we could narrow it down to the subset who do?

This is quite correct. The FTC estimated that there are 106,000 businesses offering subscriptions to Americans. Those are the ones that would have to comply with the new rules.

A hundred million dollars is a lot of money, but divided by a hundred thousand businesses it suddenly is only $1000 each. Not actually that much! Since the new rules proposed by the FTC include a lot more than just a button on a website, complying with the rules would in fact require every one of these companies to do a fair amount of work. They’ll have to review all of their existing marketing material, and all of the forms that they use to sign up customers. They must ensure that all material facts are disclosed to every prospective customer, and that consent is obtained from the customer correctly.

Certainly these are good rules for businesses to follow, but the question now is the cost. Can your business review all of its marketing material for less than $1000? I doubt it. So the judge rightfully noted that the FTC’s estimate of the impact was insufficient.

And all they have to do as a result is to allow additional public comment on the proposed rules, with the specific intent to find alternatives. If these alternative rules would be just as effective but cheaper to comply with then the FTC is supposed to drop their own proposed rules and adopt the alternatives. They had already done some of this in the earlier phases of the process, and the result was that several unworkable rules were indeed dropped. They could have spent a few more months doing the final review and analysis, but they decided to rush it through instead.

> What's more interesting to me is the court is basically admitting that doing the right thing for customers will cost unscrupulous businesses more than $100M they're currently fleecing those customers for, so they won't let this go ahead.

I’ll say it again that this has nothing to do with how much the unscrupulous are getting away with, or whether it would cost the unscrupulous businesses anything at all. This is entirely about the cost to the legitimate businesses.

106. db48x ◴[] No.44516961{5}[source]
Right. It doesn’t count the money consumers save by not being trapped primarily because most businesses are legitimate. This threshold is all about identifying rules that are costly for legitimate businesses to implement and allowing them time to suggest alternative rules. If the alternative rules would be just as effective while being cheaper to implement, then the FTC is supposed to drop their own proposed rules in favor of the cheaper alternatives.
107. ◴[] No.44517297{3}[source]
108. tsimionescu ◴[] No.44518196[source]
I find it quite absurd to suggest that a ruling that forces corporations to simplify their business practices would cost $100 million to implement. I would be willing to bet the companies would significantly reduce their spending by following these rules, not increase them. But it's not in any way surprising that they'd find a judge who buys their massively overinflated estimates over the FTC's calculations.
109. jemmyw ◴[] No.44519537{4}[source]
But as I noted, there is nothing stopping you keeping that option. It is perfectly fine for you to pay for the option if you want to keep paying for it, even without using it. That is perfectly efficient. The inefficiency is when you want to cancel in order to spend the money elsewhere and you're unable to do so because the subscription is hard to cancel. At that point you no longer want the service, you want to spend your money on cakes, but you cannot.
110. BolexNOLA ◴[] No.44520733{12}[source]
I don’t understand what you’re saying anymore. It sounds like you’re agreeing with me? If we have to celebrate when it happens, then that means it’s not a standard expectation. It’s special and worthy of celebration.
111. caesil ◴[] No.44523714{4}[source]
Moving money from one pocket to another... is economic activity.
112. rtkwe ◴[] No.44523962{4}[source]
The FTC did their estimate, it came out to less than $100 million so they, to their estimation were not required to take the additional steps of some types of impact analysis and the required comment period etc about it, the courts are disagreeing with the FTC and kicking the rule out. They only have to do that extra step when the economic impact would exceed $100m USD.
113. dctoedt ◴[] No.44525401{6}[source]
> Regulating the “public health, welfare, and morals” is the prerogative of state legislatures. So the question is whether there is anything in the constitution that overrides that general power. Resort to “emanations from penumbras” is a concession that there isn’t.

Your comments these past months seem to evince an extreme textualist view of the Constitution's limits on government power.

Would it be fair to say that, in your view, a state government can take whatever action it wants, so long as the action isn't literally prohibited by the text of the Constitution? (In other words, for state governments, anything not prohibited is allowed?)

I'm curious: What's your view of the doctrine that under the 14th Amendment, state governments must comply with the Bill of Rights to the same extent as the federal government?

You periodically mock "emanations from penumbras" — is it your view that the phrase has more significance than simply a figure of speech to communicate the underlying concepts? (I have my own issues about Justice Douglas's track record, but that's not one of them.)

replies(1): >>44527824 #
114. rayiner ◴[] No.44527824{7}[source]
> Your comments these past months seem to evince an extreme textualist view of the Constitution's limits on government power.

I have an extreme textualist view of constitutional limits on legislative power.

> Would it be fair to say that, in your view, a state government can take whatever action it wants, so long as the action isn't literally prohibited by the text of the Constitution?

I wouldn’t say “literally.” I would say it’s a fair reading, as one would apply to a commercial contract.

>,(In other words, for state governments, anything not prohibited is allowed?)

Yes, state governments are not ones of enumerated powers. They inherited the plenary legislative power of the British parliament and can do whatever they want that’s not expressly prohibited.

> I'm curious: What's your view of the doctrine that under the 14th Amendment, state governments must comply with the Bill of Rights to the same extent as the federal government?

I think it’s unsound. My secret left wing view is I think New York can regulate guns (but also Utah can make a state church).

> You periodically mock "emanations from penumbras" — is it your view that the phrase has more significance than simply a figure of speech to communicate the underlying concepts?

It’s a figure of speech that is especially revealing of the “underlying concept,” which is discovering constitutional principles in moral or political philosophy. I basically don’t think that’s legitimate. The constitution embodies a particular set of moral and political philosophies. Sometimes we add more (e.g. the concept of equal protection). But judges don’t get to be philosophers weighing in on moral issues the framers of the constitution and amendments clearly didn’t contemplate.