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Comment by liendolucas | Hacker News Reader

Why isn't there yet a "two clicks away unsubscribe" law? Unsubscribing from any service is two clicks away: one for unsubscribing and the second should be a mail with a link to confirm that you effectively want to unsubscribe. And you should receive another email confirming that you definitely unsubscribed. This button for unsubscribing should be visible at all times from whatever app/browser/GUI you're using. It is as simple as that. Why isn't this a solved problem yet?

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California actually passed a law requiring unsubscribing from a subscription to be as easy as subscribing to it. NY Times is infamous for requiring calling to unsubscribe, but if your billing address is in California, you can do it on the website.

Such businesses deserve canceling customers to be as inefficient and costly as possible in the cancel call.

"Ah, my name? I'll spell it out. It's a bit long and difficult to understand through a phone"

"D like the first letter of De…o…xy…ri…bo…nu…cle…ic". A few seconds pass. "You can confirm you got it right? Right, D, D like Deoxyribonucleic, the first word in DNA. That's what you have in your cells. Okay, were was I? Let me start over… What, you are what you say? Ah, annoyed? It'd be easier on a form on your website you know… bear with me…"

While this sounds fun and satisfies our justice reflex, the only person you're "getting back at" here is a low paid call-center worker who you're causing stress by missing their targets and tanking their metrics, who has no power over decisions like this.

It's the equivalent of trying to inconvenience BigStoreCo by harassing a register worker and something best avoided.

If everybody started doing it:

- suddenly all low paid workers would miss the same targets, in which case no individual can be blamed anymore

- the madness might stop rapidly because it would make the dark pattern worthless

I sympathize with the low paid workers. I also don't like the fact that by that logic, businesses can just use low paid workers to protect themselves from the consequences of their dark patterns. Like, it's all too easy to go full evil and just put relatable human shields in front so nobody feels like lifting a finger. What are we supposed to do against this?

Of course, it won't happen: the effective way of fixing this would be through law.

Now, while this comment is serious, the previous one was more intended as humor.

I disagree here. The right action is boycotting the company and lobbying/protesting/voting for better consumer and worker protections. Or organize it as a concentrated group action so your first point holds, but don't just do it solo.

Boycotting is a nice counter measure. Effectively, you don't even participate in funding the dark pattern and you put a pressure on fixing it because of the loss of income.

You need to know the issue beforehand though.

lobbying/protesting/voting for better consumer and worker protections is obviously the right thing to do, and acting collectively too. Only collective actions will be effective against such tings, most probably.

This brings up a good point that harassment of dark pattern implementors is an untapped market. Just slap on AI and sell it as a service…

“You paid them to waste your time, pay us to waste theirs!”

Just don't use the word "harassment" in your marketing material, and find a solid justification for the existence of your business for legitimate purposes, while at the same time reaching your target xD.

They just hang up on you if it's taking too long

The difference is that the other side is paid to do it, and the caller is wasting their time.

Another difference is that the customer wants something, and the other side can just hang up if their patience runs out.

Ah, you make me yearn for the days when I had time to troll someone like that over bad business practices.

P for pneumatic, X for xylophone...

I unsubscribed to two mailing lists just yesterday. Open the mails, click unsubscribe, confirm. I do remember the old days, though.

Or:

Robert Loggia. R as in Robert Loggia. O as in "Oh my god, it's Robert Loggia." B as in "By God! It's Robert Loggia." E as in "Everybody loves Robert Loggia." R as in Robert Loggia. T as in "Tim, look over there! It's Robert Loggia." Space. L as in "Look! It's Robert Loggia."...

Same rule has been in place in the EU for a few years, such a godsend. Before there were still a lot of places where subscribing could be done online, but unsubscribing required a registered letter.

Maybe other countries are different, but terminations here are a unilateral declaration of intent. Would it occur to you to tell a company exactly how its communications (e.g. invoices) should look like? No, of course not. And neither can a company tell you exactly how your terminations should look like. It's none of their business.

IIRC Colorado has or had such a law. I took advantage of it to cancel Xbox Live back in the day by updating my billing address and then canceling the service (despite not living in Colorado).

Heh, you can't cancel xbox live online with a click? You have to call?

This was way, way back in the early 360 days. I don't know what you have to do now.

I think roughly the same rules around consent for sex (ie."ongoing enthusiastic consent") should also apply to money.

They should have to actively ask "are you still using us?" if you aren't using the subscription ending it if you don't get back to them.

Brings a whole new meaning to "sleeping giants"

> Why isn't there yet a "two clicks away unsubscribe" law?

B̶r̶i̶b̶i̶n̶g̶ Lobbing.

Oh, that's just considered "tipping" now. What's the big deal, what could possibly go wrong?

you could do a one-click unsubscribe, but then set up a website where that button keeps jumping away from your mouse for 20 minutes, while it's showing you uplifting messages why in fact, you should continue with the subscription. Still, only one click!

Or, follow this maze with your mouse pointer until the unsubscribe button in the middle. If you hover-move across a wall, you need to start from the beginning. Good luck!

Pretty sure when I unsubbed from Amazon Prime a few years back, I had to navigate three or four pages of “are you really sure…” where the primary button sometimes took me further and sometimes sent me back. It was fun. And afterwards my Roku TV box somehow managed to resub me twice even though I didn’t watch any Prime content (customer support rep said it was the Roku and I had no other explanation).

> And afterwards my Roku TV box somehow managed to resub me twice even though I didn’t watch any Prime content ...

Is that the kind of thing that a pet chewing on a remote control (or similar) could trigger?

No idea. I just wanted the customer service rep to reverse the credit card charge (yeah I only found out from monthly review of credit card bill, pretty sure I never even got an email saying my subscription was reenabled) and cancel the subscription, and didn’t prod when that goal was achieved. After the second time I ditched the Roku altogether. IIRC I also did a sign-out-everywhere.

> but then set up a website where that button keeps jumping away from your mouse for 20 minutes, while it's showing you uplifting messages why in fact, you should continue with the subscription. Still, only one click

Most laws can be misinterpreted, it doesn't necessarily mean they are useless.

This would follow the letter of the law, but not its spirit. It might not fly in court. IANAL.

you are a monster.

> This button for unsubscribing should be visible at all times from whatever app/browser/GUI you're using

At all times? So movie streaming subscription services would have to have an unsubscribe button on the movie playback screen?!

I can't see any reason it would not be sufficient to just require an unsubscribe button or link on the account management page.

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