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US Court nullifies FTC requirement for click-to-cancel

(arstechnica.com)
575 points gausswho | 2 comments | 08 Jul 25 22:42 UTC | HN request time: 0.036s | source
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John23832 ◴[09 Jul 25 13:14 UTC] 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.

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caesil ◴[09 Jul 25 14:59 UTC] 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.

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rtkwe ◴[09 Jul 25 15:39 UTC] 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.
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vkou ◴[09 Jul 25 16:36 UTC] No.44512060[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.
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1. rtkwe ◴[09 Jul 25 17:01 UTC] No.44512372[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.
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2. db48x ◴[10 Jul 25 03:40 UTC] No.44516961[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.