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>What's crazy is there is so much straight pure scam crap on the internet the FTC does nothing about.

>In my case I tried to cancel a subscription 30 days in advance recently (nearly 1K per year). It turns out you have to cancel 90 days in advance but not more than 120 days in advance?? So now I'm on the hook for another 1K.

>And instead of the click to sign up, I had to go through endless hoops. Talked to someone, then they wanted me to submit a case, I did that, then back and forth to "verify" me etc etc.

>The FTC is crickets on just endless false advertising, misleading internet offers etc (stuff that's not even close to OK).

I share your frustration, however I suspect this is more an indictment of our industry than FTC's apathy. Of course the FTC and other regulatory bodies are pursing enterprises for behavior other than that described in the link, but it may understandably be perceived that nothing is being done about those other egregious behaviors due simply to the sheer volume of occurrence.

This industry is rife with user-hostile behavior. It's become so commonplace you'll find these purveyors openly discussing it as if there isn't anything wrong with what they are doing; industry "best practices."

It's insane.

They do bring suits against scammers pretty regularly, but they only really go after very successful scammers who have stolen 7-8 figures+ from their victims. The FTC does not have the resources to go after smaller claims. They leave that up to civil plaintiff to at least somewhat rectify. They're not as inactive as you think it's just that there's a LOT of federal crime that goes unpunished. The federal government in general is only capable of effectively pursuing a small sample of federal crimes that occur.

This has a lot to do with the way that we finance our regulators -- a lot of these crimes could be handled on a bounty system, which would fix the manpower problems.

But even going against big players like Amazon, why can't they say - hey, you are selling products with totally false descriptions, refund everyone who but the fake "apple certified" device, or the "UL listed" device. Just do mass refunds across 10's of thousands of customers.

Instead they are going after Apple. In my experience at least least scammy company out there. My refunds go through, the warranty / applecare stuff works, subscription renewals are fair and easy to cancel, no * fine print on trials.

>But even going against big players like Amazon, why can't they say - hey, you are selling products with totally false descriptions, refund everyone who but the fake "apple certified" device, or the "UL listed" device. Just do mass refunds across 10's of thousands of customers.

Do we know for a fact that there is no activity here, that the FTC (or other bodies) aren't currently building cases or performing investigations?

We as in the public have not been told this is underway. Nor have we heard hints, leaks or anything of the sort.

This is not happening right now based on the available information.

>We as in the public have not been told this is underway. Nor have we heard hints, leaks or anything of the sort.

>This is not happening right now based on the available information.

If we continue with that logic -- an apparent lack of information regarding active investigations -- the only conclusion that makes sense is "we don't know."

Every federal agency that has anything to do with consumer products sends Amazon warning letters all the time regarding specific sellers and individuals, including the FTC, telling AMZ to knuckle down on the seller and/or the brand, or vaguely telling Amazon "do something" which Amazon may misinterpret. Then there are the more significant inquiries that are also going on apart from those 'market, regulate thyself' actions.

Khan has only held the chair for two months. FTC has had other priorities in the past, but given her publishing history it's a good bet that Amazon is now under scrutiny as well.

> Just do mass refunds across 10's of thousands of customers.

> Instead they are going after Apple.

They have ordered Amazon to do mass refunds in the past for other reasons.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2017/05/refun...

>They're not as inactive as you think

I don't think they're inactive. I tried to convey that by describing what may be perceived as "doing nothing" is really the inundation of awful behavior in this industry.

Civil litigation is one version of a bounty system.

What's crappy is the long tail of these scams is probably 10 times bigger than the single largest scam.

"In my case I tried to cancel a subscription 30 days in advance recently (nearly 1K per year). It turns out you have to cancel 90 days in advance but not more than 120 days in advance?? So now I'm on the hook for another 1K."

I believe you can put a stop payment at the bank. At my bank they charge $30. When the creditor calls the bank, they will read to the creditor the reason you are not paying.

Not paying does not absolve you of your contractual obligations though.

I had a service that I just stopped paying for once, assuming that they'd cancel my account when the money stopped coming. False - they kept billing me then sold my "debt" to a debt-collection firm who called me at work etc.

When I was young I learned this the very hard way. I moved. Called to cancel my cable service. Person said no problem, box up modem and leave it outside. I did that.

Never thought of it again for 4-5 years until I was trying to rent a place in my own name. Yep, the retention specialist 5 years ago met his numbers by NOT cancelling me out. So I had something like an extra 12 months of charges plus modem cost plus a credit hit.

Because I really need this place to live in (3 others were depending on it/me) I ended up coughing up a ton of money. Lessons learned.

Sounds like in that case you were a victim of fraud rather than avoiding your contractual obligations?

"fraud" is when you don't have lawyers to get you out of the problem.

>This industry is rife with user-hostile behavior. It's become so commonplace you'll find these purveyors openly discussing it as if there isn't anything wrong with what they are doing; industry "best practices.

The interesting part is that the comment you're replying to attempts to normalize a number of anti-competitive strategies employed by Facebook in the exact same way.

Supernormalization at work - if your institutions get defanged, people 'learn' to accept the new status quo as the way of things.

We used to refer to these things as press release politics. There is no goal to enforce any rule or punish anyone, they are designed for those on the political side to say, see, look how hard we are working for you, then the business consents to some minor thing with zero punishment and gets to say, see, we worked with the people in politics and we have all made things better.

You can see this see this at all levels of politics and business.

Sure - but there are folks getting straight scammed endlessly online - can't they do these press releases AND do some enforcement of just stuff with direct consumer harm?

Kids haven't been on Facebook for more than a decade. It's all TikTok and Discord for my 3 kids.

Facebook Kids Messenger is popular with my kids and their friends; AFAICT, it's the only messenging app that allows preschool and primary school kids to communicate with each other under the watchful eye of their parents.

It's got solid parental controls, fun little mini games, loads of photo editing and video tools that are appealing to kids.

Pretty much kept my kids' cohort of friends connected during the lockdown.

It's a pity I distrust Facebook so much that I'd never give this a try (my kids simply don't social except sorta on Nintendo).

My kids connected with their friends through outside activities properly masked up.

Outside gatherings were banned for a while here, so even masked groups in public parks were not feasible.

Ugh. Sorry to hear that. IMHO the damage done to the kids here is worse than the risks they would face from the virus.

Kudos to you for doing what you can to keep your kids connected socially.

Facebook Kids Messenger is decent (for all the reasons you mentioned), however, I am pessimistic about it being genuinely appealing to kids. It's staying alive because middle-aged parents are forcing it on their children - they are the consume and decision-maker. My experience is once kids are allowed to make their own decisions they quickly move away from it.

Of course once kids are allowed to make their own decisions, the main value of FKM is gone. (parental controls and such)

So it isn't the best example, and it isn't really facebook per se but more of a separate product, but still.... it is squarely aimed at kids that aren't old enough to make decisions for themselves, by design.

The last case against FB, that was thrown out of court was also very weak. Now, the new head of the FTC had spoken out against monopolies. It isn't surprising that a hardliner who is emotionally invested in bringing down Big Tech won't accomplish much. I think we can expect similar cases brought against Google, Amazon etc.

I think there are probably good cases to be made in areas.

Maybe something around consumer harm - ie, people bought oculus devices being told no facebook login, now required to use a login - do something like a 70% refund for those who want one and return their device?

Or 100% refund in cases like this https://www.tomshardware.com/news/oculus-quest-2-users-banne...

But "getting" Big Tech shouldn't become their focus. Protecting consumers should come first.

>Are kids still even active on facebook?

10 years ago in college, about 90% of my friends were using Facebook every day.

Today, we're ~30 y/o. I'd estimate about 10% of my friends use facebook every day, and more than 50% of them use it less than once week.

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that many people younger than me are barely using facebook at all. Most of the people I interact with on facebook these days are older relatives.

Right - similar boat. I haven't posted in a year or two plus? I used to work with kids when it was basically the be all end all of everything. For me the endless politics just was a turn off - keep friends updated other ways (icloud shared albums are fun!).

Sadly this is what happens when an office, like the FTC, is politicized.

FTC caters to the current party and pursues an aligned agenda over other things that can bring a tangible benefit to the population.

What's the basis for saying they're "crickets" on such scams? Those shady operators tend to be much smaller and less newsworthy than Facebook, so you don't read about them, but that doesn't mean it's not happening.

I interned with the FTC's consumer protection division in Los Angeles during law school. My job was calling up people who had filed Better Business Bureau complaints and helping them to provide affidavits against the companies that scammed them. At the time we were focused on prepaid debit card scams.

Have you complained to the FTC about the company with the 1k/yr subscription? Made a BBB complaint? Filed a small claims court suit?

The fact that robocall scams still exist is all the evidence I need.

It has a pretty easy regulatory solution too: fine everyone up the chain for every one of these calls delivered. Service providers will figure it out pretty quickly.

> * These social network things seem somewhat fragile. Myspace came and went, Friendster was hot. Now I see a lot more folks on tiktok. Are kids still even active on facebook?

Facebook's only role in my life is as the main web presence for lots and lots of small organizations. They may have other things—even a website—but FB will be the first, and sometimes only, place content is posted. HOA, kids' schools, small area businesses, almost all treat FB is their main outlet for information, even if they do communicate some on other channels.

What's crazy is there is so much straight pure scam crap on the internet the FTC does nothing about. I mean, stuff that is obvious consumer harm. In my case I tried to cancel a subscription 30 days in advance recently (nearly 1K per year).

These situations are solved with regulation. But not the regular kind of regulation, but one that forces business of a certain type to have simpler procedures for actions like canceling, procedures that also keep a public record that some authorities can readily inspect and do instant arbitration.

It's possible to make it work. Once there is no incentive for the companies to stall your cancelation or complaints, they suddenly lose interest and use their resources to do productive work. How do I know it works? I've seen it in action for the last decade or two: if you want to change mobile providers (in Spain, not sure about the USA) you just start a suscription with the new one. The former receives the notification and you don't even need to deal with them, except for one call offering you a counter-proposal.

A similar system could be implemented for many other suscriptions services.

The current FTC chair was appointed for her well publicised hipster antitrust stance.

>These social network things seem somewhat fragile. Myspace came and went, Friendster was hot. Now I see a lot more folks on tiktok. Are kids still even active on facebook?<

Not until they need it for a job or coordination need. Laying all the platforms out as competitors is sort of misguided imo though. Most social media platforms aren't competing for the same space they're competing to be the first to establish that space. Insta and Snapchat compete as did Myspace and Facebook. But Facebook, Insta, Discord, Whatsapp, Tiktok, Twitch, and Clubhouse are wildly different beasts as far as the experiences they offer and encourage even if the millenials and older generations just lump everything under 'social media business' because they see feeds and instant messaging. Most of these platforms might share demographics but they're wildly different products.

> * What's crazy is there is so much straight pure scam crap on the internet the FTC does nothing about. I mean, stuff that is obvious consumer harm. In my case I tried to cancel a subscription 30 days in advance recently (nearly 1K per year). It turns out you have to cancel 90 days in advance but not more than 120 days in advance?? So now I'm on the hook for another 1K. That is just total trash behavior online. And instead of the click to sign up, I had to go through endless hoops. Talked to someone, then they wanted me to submit a case, I did that, then back and forth to "verify" me etc etc.*

Do a chargeback and let the company deal with the fallout from their payment processors.

I will just deal with the cancellation issue:

Use privacy.com for this. For every online subscription, you create a new credit card number, which can have preset limits. I like to give it enough money for ONE payment, and then it expires. You can also make it a one-time-use card.

These temp cards are all backed by your "real" card. There's no fee. You don't get real privacy (i.e. the payments still show up on your bank statement) unless you pay $10/month, but if all you want is the ability to cancel immediately, this is for you. Take back the control.

Some web service makes it difficult for you to cancel? Screw 'em -- just cancel the credit card you gave them.

One issue - I like actually that Apple is big enough to negotiate (ie, screw over) third party developers.

You have to notify of renewal terms of trial in same font (ie, $1 for 1 week, $100 per month after).

You have to allow people to use your app anonymously (ie, with an apple sign in).

I KNOW I could never negotiate terms like these - but Apple can.

Yes, it probably is a sign they have too much power, but they seem to direct a lot of their headaches to third parties, which makes my consumer experience better not worse.

Good tips on the privacy.com thing.

> Are kids still even active on facebook?

Most people my age don't use Facebook or only use it to keep in contact with family. My friends and I have recently re-created accounts on the platform because our respective universities require them for orientation or clubs and whatnot.

Could you instruct the payment vendor not to pay this charge? I've found that to be quite effective for "free first period" offers that refused to turn off.

See my comment above about privacy.com

> not more than 120 days in advance

Are such clauses binding, or can you send your cancellation by registered mail now and do a chargeback if they try to bill you beyond that?

Reversing mergers is completely appropriate when the merger is found to have caused harm to competition after the fact. It would be a crazy world if the FTC didn't pursue that.

Sadly Facebook is really a faceless corporation after all.

>These were all approved at the time

With specific conditions, which Facebook violated

Ugh - I hate this HN type of misinformation. It just seems reactionary.

Please post to the conditions facebook violated around their instagram acquisition. Remember, instagram had 13 staff or something - it was pretty tiny!

Even folks who are arguing for breakups admit this fact:

" Yet the Federal Trade Commission approved the merger without conditions. "

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/09/28/case-break...

> Instagram wasn't that big when purchased

That's... the point. Instagram was a very rapidly growing threat to Facebook's market position. Facebook took drastic action to ensure that they didn't become big.

Yeah, by growing them to 1bn users! That'll show them.

Personally, I think there's a much stronger case for the cloning of Snapchat rather than the acquisition of IG.

The Whatsapp acquisition should probably be unwound though.

I'm talking about Instagram the company, which is what the FTC cares about -- competition. FB eliminated Instagram as a competing company when they purchased them. Buying up competitors to keep dominant control of a market is absolutely an antitrust violation.

It is a hard requirement that my two non-profit organizations have a FaceCrook presence. It is the same for a majority of businesses. This is clearly a monopoly position.

The level of service that they are providing to the user pales in comparison to the value of the data they extract in exchange. There is clear harm to the users.

That this is not a simple case against them is a clear failing of the regulators and/or their laws.

Why is it a hard requirement?

In the US at least, not having a social presence is indicative of an outdated enterprise. FB is the primary expectation. (along with a Google and Apple Maps link for your address)