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Comment by akoster | Hacker News Reader

The FTC needs to make a “click to register, mail to modify your preferences” illegal similar to how “click to subscribe, call to cancel” is now outlawed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29250063

P.S.: At least can venmo be compelled to act or confirm our choice if we are forced to mail in their form? Can they claim they never received it, that it was printed incorrectly (since the form isn’t a PDF and can be easily rendered differently by various browsers) or missing some specific info?

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They could claim they never received it; if you do a lot of business on Venmo, it might be worth investing a few bucks in sending via certified mail.

I don't think they'd have a leg to stand on in claiming that your version of the form was incorrectly rendered, as long as you provided all the requested information.

If you failed to include every piece of information the form asks for, perhaps they'd have an argument to reject your opt-out; the contract does specifically say that every piece of info must be included and it must be signed.

No click to confirm, Venmo has to mail YOU to ask for binding arbitration by certified mail, asking YOU with a SASE to confirm by certified mail back. Then it would be consent.

Where are you seeing that they have to do that?

It seems like Venmo and PayPal can get away with murder by us not opting out of it if it's written in their terms.

Suggesting yet another rule to eliminate some undesired behavior makes me think you are running into a Gödel's incompleteness but in law. We should instead cut the Gordian Knot and try to resolve these issues in a different manner.

This strikes me as the preamble to some "it's like law but oN thE BloCkChAiN" pitch, which ignores that law is designed to be interpreted by human beings, and by definition does not operate like code. Ask any lawyer preparing for a trial, they'll tell you that they have an idea how strong their case is but you really don't have any idea how it will turn out until the arguments are made. This is by design.

Replacing the system wholesale is... an incredibly naïve solution, to say the least.

I am just arguing against the idea that yet one more rule will resolve a fundamental problem inherent to a legal system. You need something else.

I think even Alexander Solzhenitsyn hints at these issues in his essay: https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/a-world-split-apart

Solzhenitsyn never advocated for the law to end

I really wish HN didn't have this tradition of fake references into academia, and recognized why citations have to be specific

You are claiming that he said the exact opposite of what he actually said

> "Western society has chosen for itself the organization best suited to its purposes and one I might call legalistic. The limits of human rights and rightness are determined by a system of laws; such limits are very broad. People in the West have acquired considerable skill in using, interpreting, and manipulating law (though laws tend to be too complicated for an average person to understand without the help of an expert). Every conflict is solved according to the letter of the law and this is considered to be the ultimate solution. If one is right from a legal point of view, nothing more is required, nobody may mention that one could still not be entirely right, and urge self-restraint or a renunciation of these rights, call for sacrifice and selfless risk: This would simply sound absurd. Voluntary self-restraint is almost unheard of: Everybody strives toward further expansion to the extreme limit of the legal frames"

I would emphasize that last sentence. I didnt even say that Solzhenitsyn advocates for my view I said he hints at these issues in this essay.

I don't know how you can possibly interpret that as a call to remove law as unfixable.

That just says "neckbeards constantly test limits, Westerners are lawsuit happy because it lets them emotionally avoid compromise, and sometimes people should choose not to take everything to court when they could just be nice."

I have the strong impression that you have never read this book and are trying to argue from a search engine

Large parts of this book rail against what you're saying as villainy, and that it is oppressors who argue for the removal of the law in the faked hope of finding something better

This is not a book this is a speech (I dont even think this is excerpt from a book so I am not sure where this book idea is coming from) And yes he even in the next paragraph says that a lawless society is horrible. "I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed."

I dont think he nor I think of it as "neckbeards constantly testing limits" but as the whole of society; specifically the area that matters here is corporations.

I am not into Crypto blah blah solutions. I am simply arguing that yet another random specific law doesnt seem to fix the issue.

Using legal mechanisms to solve these kind of issues is ineffective, inefficient, and inegalitarian.

> And yes he even in the next paragraph says that a lawless society is horrible.

which is weird because he's being held up as support of removing the law in favor of (handwavey nothing)

> Using legal mechanisms to solve these kind of issues is ineffective, inefficient, and inegalitarian.

No evidence supports these claims and no replacement is offered.

Criticism without evidence or replacement is facile.

>which is weird because he's being held up as support of removing the law in favor of

I never made this claim.

The evidence is the subject of the original post itself. This is part of a thread. Click on parent...

What a disappointing conversation.

That seems like an inappropriate thing to say.

Good luck to you.

Indeed, you didn't make that claim. Fascinating to see the same user you replied to do the same thing in your subthread as he did in mine earlier on in the day. I also see you are no less disappointed with your conversation with said user than I was with mine. How very coincidental...

You meet all types on the internet :)

No "other manner" is here described, or has ever been described by humanity

Making abusive behavior illegal isn't about numerical representation

To cut the Gordian knot means to ignore the problem as irrelevant by discarding previous requirements. You seem to be suggesting that we should not require large corporations to get our consent before binding us to things

I find that the heavy use of imagery can make falling backwards sound like progress

But no, we shouldn't throw out the law just because a new scam emerged

This isn’t the way it should be but if you want proof they received it you could send it via certified letter

You get a receipt showing they received it

"you should have to spend your own time and money to prove that you did not agree to something that they tried to sneak past you"

In an ethical world they would need a receipt that you agreed

Verizon is still violating “click to subscribe, call to cancel” routinely with their 5G Home services. You can get the modem delivered to your door with a couple clicks but you have to chat with support to get the line cancelled. You can’t even take the device into a physical store to return.

Can someone explain what this arbiting is about? What the hell am I agreeing to if I don't mail this form?

Also if I do mail this form why do they want to know where I live? I do want to opt out of shitty terms if that be the case but I don't wish to tell them and any potential stalkers where I live

Same with services (commonly internet and phone service) that allows you to easily create an account online, but requires calling a representative to close the account.

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