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Comment by glimshe | Hacker News Reader

I prefer that the government doesn't go too heavy handed with the rule and try to solve all problems with requirements such as maintaining detailed phone records. We don't want huge costs of compliance making it harder for small players to enter the market.

I think the rule of "sign up online, cancel online using a clearly visible option in the account settings", plus the legalese to cover corner cases, would be a huge improvement. Making it difficult to cancel a subscription is the oldest trick on the book and is tantamount to fraud.

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> ...such as maintaining detailed phone records.

Having read the proposed amendments outlined in the notice, I don't see any mention of this. Outside the proposed amendments, the only mention of this is commentary that several state AGs have urged the commission to amend a different rule (the telephone sales rule) to require recording consent when provided by phone. However, this proposed rule making notice is about the negative option rule, and no such requirement is being proposed.

The requirements the FTC are proposal are refreshingly reasonable. Here is a link to the FTC's page on this, which includes links to the full text of the notice as well as a link to a one-pager summary.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/03/...

> We don't want huge costs of compliance making it harder for small players to enter the market.

As the same time, I would love to see cost build up when the large players grow larger. Maybe some form of enforcement tiers -- you need to do this or that when you have this many of users.

> We don't want huge costs of compliance making it harder for small players to enter the market.

If that were the effect of the FTC's maneuvering, I would not expect Netflix or Disney to oppose it. It would be the government helping them build moats - a wonderful reason for them to pay those lobbyists.

> We don't want huge costs of compliance making it harder for small players to enter the market.

A laudable goal in theory. In practice when was the last time a small player entered the streaming market? This mindset enables the massive entrenched corporations to abuse customers.

There are quite a few niche streaming services which have kicked off in the last few years -

- Nebula (content from YouTube creators),

- WoW Presents Plus (RuPaul’s Drag Race and associated shows)

- Taskmaster.tv (the UK taskmaster series)

I’m not sure how independent any of those are (e.g. RuPaul’s Drag Race is linked with MTV, and Taskmaster with the UK channel 4) and they are intentionally niche, sometimes with a single show.

How many interstitials would you allow after the clearly visible option in the account settings?

None. Perhaps one of it triggers some deletes or privacy related changes.

This has actually been the case in Germany (and perhaps even EU) for a while. Mostly because courts have ruled that cancelation must not be harder than signing up.

In Germany they were especially trying to force you to send letters or fax cancellations when you could sign up or upgrade via phone, e-mail or web form. Courts said no to that practice.

Exactly one, "are you sure you want to cancel the subscription?" "yes" "no".

Or in modern web fashion:

> Would you like to continue your subscription? "Yes", "Maybe later"

^^^ And we have a winner! This is the correct answer.

I'd be okay with "yes", "no", and "show me more options" as long as all the buttons are rendered similarly.

How many interstitials do you think the judge will let you get away with when the law clearly states "it should be as easy as signing up"?

The same amount it takes to sign up

You might need name, address etc as part of the sign up, but if they made me enter all of that againz it would be infuriating.

That isn't signing up, that is filling out a profile and/or stating/proving who you are (for payment processing & fraud prevention purposes). While it is often closely linked to “signing up” it is not actually a direct part of it.

Even if you consider it all to be part of the sign-up, it could be a single form so the match of “as many forms to cancel as to sign-up” still works: this one form for signing up, the “are you sure, this is why you might prefer not to” page being its opposite at the other end.

They don't have to, they can just do fewer or the same that it takes to sign up. Better yet, we could require "one-click unsubscribe". It's our country and we get to choose to make it better.

I agree, that would be super annoying, but at the same time the law would still be mostly working this case, since you still don't need to eg fax a form or have to get on a long phone call. I think "the effort you need to sign up" is a reasonable ceiling, and while it's unfortunate if a company decides to be petty and make you enter your address again, that same company would probably do more if they were given the legal right to do so.

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