FTC rule on unfair or deceptive fees to take effect on May 12 | Hacker News Reader

FTC rule on unfair or deceptive fees to take effect on May 12

ftc.gov

185 pointsimpish9208119 comments

FAQ: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/rule-unfair-...

Discussion (658 points, 5 months ago, 663 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42445037

Why limit this to live-event and lodging industries? Why not all the fees tacked on by cell carriers?

For example, AT&T charges a fee to "recover certain aggregate expenses AT&T incurs, including, but not limited to, charges AT&T or its agents pay to interconnect with other carriers to deliver calls from AT&T customers to their customers and charges associated with cell site rents and maintenance" [1]

[1] https://www.att.com/legal/terms.otherWirelessFeeSchedule.htm...

Lobbying and regulatory capture

Regulations like this are written in consultation with the industries being regulated. There is a ton of wrangling and nailing down details. It's usually hundreds of pages long and specific to the industry.

So they can't just write a single thing that rights all wrongs. And their staffing is extremely limited.

>they can't just write a single thing that writes all wrongs.

Found the attorney! Nobody asked for "a single thing that writes all wrongs."

Simple, broad laws can absolutely be written, they are especially easy to write, and they are usually the best laws for decent average citizens, but decent average citizens are not who laws are written for in the United States. Most people already know this.

Isn’t it kind of helpful to have an attorney’s opinion on law?

Anyways, it’s very easy to complain there isn’t a law which eliminates whatever fees you think are ridiculous across a large swathe of industries. What specific implementation would you suggest, though? I’ve not heard of these apparently simple approaches.

> What specific implementation would you suggest, though? I’ve not heard of these apparently simple approaches.

Good question! Thank you for asking, I will do my best to help provide the answer:

One common implementation is to require that all marketing show the final price most prominently, which seems reasonable to me.

"But wait," some may interject, "That final price may vary depending on jurisdiction!"

Yes, that is true, and entirely possible to deal with, and requiring advertisers to account for that is a better solution than requiring all customers to deal with the alternative. Besides, nobody is forcing the company to vary the price. They can just charge a flat price that accounts for the average of all local fees, and/or eat the fees, which was the intent of the legislation in the first place.

Thanks for answering! So you’re saying the solution is basically more clarity? I think I could agree with that. Probably effects similar to when we added calorie counts to menus here in America.

I don't exactly want a law that eliminates the fees, just that displayed prices are the "out the door" price that can be broken down however you like internally.

Without it it's much more work to comparison shop because you have to actually try and purchase from everyone to see the real price.

> Simple, broad laws can absolutely be written,

This isn’t a law. It’s a regulatory policy.

Simple, broad laws have another term that you can often use to describe them: “sweeping”.

Those kinds of changes are better left to legislators, who are responsive to political pressure and subject to elections.

I’m all for regulatory rulemaking by executives, but it should generally be careful narrow rulemaking. Simple, broad, sweeping changes should generally be left to the legislature.

> I’m all for regulatory rulemaking by executives, but it should generally be careful narrow rulemaking. Simple, broad, sweeping changes should generally be left to the legislature.

I would agree, if not for the empirical evidence showing us that legislators rarely make the changes that the people want. If they're not going to do it, somebody else has to.

Narrower changes would be nice, but they require a correspondingly short feedback loop of decide-act-adjust, which does not currently exist for legislators or most government administrators. If one desires narrower changes, I encourage them to first ensure the government moves and responds to customer (citizen) needs, faster than it currently does.

Either way, government structure and action should be what meets the needs of the people.

Broad laws and regulations have obvious problems that should be evident to anyone who works with code for a living. There’s a reason lawyers are cautious and precise.

In this case, it isn't "writing a single things that rights all wrongs"

Its "Write something that helps consumers know what they'll be paying"

It wouldn't even be changing the billing at all, but changing how they advertise pricing. Fees such as the example would need to be included in advertised total price of your bill. You wouldn't even need to change the bills. The companies have enough staff to do this in advertising. Government agencies' staffing would be stretched with or without such a rule.

I live in the UK and the policy on fees is effective and runs about a hundred pages. What you are describing is regulatory capture.

The UK requires that all advertised prices include all extras and charges a typical customer will pay.

Ie. If you charge £100 for a hotel room, but have a £5 fee for using the lights, you have to advertise it as £105 because nearly every customer will be needing the lights.

Super simple rule. Works really well.

I'm in the US, so you'll have to forgive my ignorance, here, but isn't the UK's tax law pretty tightly unified at the federal level? I once got into an argument with the county (Travis, Texas) over how to account for a penny difference in the calculation of sales tax. The resulting form involved (like) 6 govt entities and 7 pages of calculations.

EDIT: if I'd been in Burnet, it'd be almost completely different forms & calculations.

In that case, you could charge a flat rate of 110, to account for the variability and your work dealing with it.

> hundreds of pages long and specific to the industry

Very convenient how it works out

For my behaviour the law is very short and clear - taking product or service without paying for it is theft.

If I pay for 1 car but take an additional wheel, I am a criminal.

But management of a company can wake up one day, take more money from my account and call it an additional fee for the same service.

Are those fees not included in the advertised price? The issue is not fees themselves but fees that are added on at the checkout screen.

Nope. This is an extra fee that they add to recover the cost of making your phone calls work. This fee is not included in the advertised price.

Typically the will be advertised as BIG MONTHLY PRICE $50/mo

Then an asterisk and tiny, tiny print somewhere below stating "plus taxes and fees"

So it depends on how you define "fees not included in the advertised price" but the last time I had a postpaid plan, I couldn't even know how much those added taxes and fees were until my first bill arrived.

it's really never as bad as it is for hotels. I once booked a hotel stay in san francisco which looked like $300 on the website, but after I was done I was charged an extra $200 for various fees which was mostly a san francisco hotel tax.. I never saw it until I checked out. It doesn't even matter if every hotel in SF gets that tax, I don't care, I want to see it before I book the place. Ideally at the "price map" screen.

As an aside, I don't know why AirBnB can't get their shit together and push all the fees to the map. My guess is that most of those fees are not per night? Well make the front matter say "$120/night + fees" and when you select your dates you know what the total cost is.

AirBnB doesn't put it on the map because they're competing against hotels, B&Bs, and services like VRBO.

Everyone has an incentive to list as low a price as possible.

For fucks sakes even car dealers are pulling this shit, listing EVs with tax rebates - that people may or may not qualify for - already deducted.

> For fucks sakes even car dealers are pulling this shit, listing EVs with tax rebates

Following Teslas lead, who for a long time showed monthly prices that included “estimated gas purchase savings” by default (you could see the actual number but you had to flip a switch to do so. At least now they have to have the sensible default).

> As an aside, I don't know why AirBnB can't get their shit together and push all the fees to the map. My guess is that most of those fees are not per night? Well make the front matter say "$120/night + fees" and when you select your dates you know what the total cost is.

The problem is that everyone says we want this then votes with our wallet that we don’t.

Stubhub once tried to be upfront honest about fees. Bookings dropped like a stone. People just didn’t want concerts at those prices. But an extra $20 when you’re already paying $80, ehhh sure okay I’ve already come this far and feel pretty committed to going.

> As the study found, “Overall, the StubHub users who weren't shown fees until checkout spent about 21 percent more on tickets and were 14 percent more likely to complete a purchase compared with those who saw all-inclusive prices from the start.“

https://boondoggle.substack.com/p/stubhub-and-the-case-of-th...

The StubHub example is the abuse that is being banned. Yes, you can bait and switch people and take more of their money than they are otherwise willing to spend if you deceive, manipulate, and withold disclosures. It is (arguably) wrong/bad, but profitable.

Exactly. When consumers don’t vote in their own best interest with their wallets, legislation is the only option.

Let’s do airlines next

Except that legislation is also not in their favor because companies will just find new ways to make money [as they should - I just wish they were more creative in providing value rather than just the "added fee shortcut"] In the end it's on consumers: People should just reward better service instead of picking the seemingly cheapest option and then cry that the world is unfair and someone has to fix it for them..

> People should just reward better service instead of picking the seemingly cheapest option

This is easy for us hackernews types with disposable income to say and very hard for the average person to implement. 57% of Americans can’t afford an unexpected $500 expense [1]

Always keep in mind the boots theory of economic unfairness:

> A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. ... But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/most-americans-cant-afford-a-50...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

True but that lies in the nature of choices people make. Apart from mortgage (or in general credit on appreciable assets) I would not recommend the on-credit lifestyle that is ad-suggested as the American Dream™ (that's different for businesses, I'm not against credits in general). As an individual carry insurance, pay the year ahead. Yes it hurts, but not as much as that unexpected 500$ expense... The boot theory works pretty well with credit though ;)

> In the end it's on consumers: People should just reward better service instead of picking the seemingly cheapest option and then cry that the world is unfair and someone has to fix it for them..

They probably should, but people just don't work this way. We aren't machines that strictly go by the best economical output. Unless you find a way to make people do that (and I don't think this exists, since we'll always be partially driven by emotions) we have two options:

a) let people be exploited by companies

b) legislate against exploitation by companies

I for sure think the latter is the better option, especially since it forces companies to compete on value instead of just extraction.

What is the better service option to Ticketmaster that consumers should be rewarding?

Ticketmaster. There is no way to obtain a ticket that isn’t couched in a convenience fee: email delivery, venue pick up, snail mail, all “convenient” and chargeable.

Voting with your wallet is like trying to turn a river by getting a bunch of people together with buckets. Voting with your votes is building a dam.

Isn't it proof that legislation doesn't work? That people can't get simple, common sense laws passed? The past 15-20 years we've had plenty of time to do so, while the fees and surcharges have grown. That timeframe is enough to control for political parties and include a mix of all voter ages and incomes.

Well, people vote with their wallets that they like being scammed (I'm talking actual scams, not scammy business behavior) so does that mean that scamming should be allowed or made legal, or at least not made illegal?

> The problem is that everyone says we want this then votes with our wallet that we don’t.

I don’t see that as a problem whatsoever.

i see this idea of “i need to manipulate people for them to give me money” as the problem.

“if i don’t manipulate and obfuscate, no one wants my product” should make one reconsider their business model to one where they can be upfront and people still want the product.

In the UK/EU that's exactly what happens

You see the full price of your stay on the map, when you click through you see the breakdown per night plus any fees

The fees can be calculated in advance. Taxes, I'll admit that given the inanity of how the US does sales taxes, I'm fine with leaving these out of advertising, but at the time where you filled out the forms and make the final confirmation, the taxes should be shown.

Different regulatory body with jurisdiction.

In politics you always need to do a first small step, and then expand on it. Attempting to pass a big paradigm shift in one-go is a receipt for failure.

On 6 April, the UK banned all drip pricing, so it is possible

"All mandatory fees, such as admin fees or ticket booking fees, must now be included in the headline price"

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fake-reviews-and-sneaky-h...

Corporate lobbyists. It's that simple.

Our founders said this was going to be a problem but better to have lobbying out in the open as the devil you know.

Cui bono

Cellular and cable providers are the reasons that you (entirely reasonably) can’t call a fee a tax unless it is actually remitted to a government agency. They used to quite happily mislead customers into thinking line items were actually taxes and not arbitrary charges.

> Live-event tickets include those for concerts, sporting events, music, theater, and other live performances that audiences watch as they occur, but not pre-recorded audio or visual performances.

What could be the reason pre-recorded audio/visual performances are excluded? Shouldn't this just be for everything? Why would some types of tickets be required to be truthful about fees and not allowed to lie about the total price in ads, while others are allowed?

Movie theaters/studios lobbied harder

"The Commission notes that the harms of bait-and-switch pricing and the misrepresentation of fees and charges are particularly pronounced in industries such as these, in which most transactions occur online. Consumers trying to comparison shop across multiple websites, or even on the same website, when deciding what tickets to purchase or where to travel are unable to do so effectively because some businesses hide the true total price and instead force consumers to go to different sites and click through multiple webpages for each offer to learn the true total price"

Since when do consumers "comparison shop across multiple websites" for concert tickets? For the official release there's usually only one vendor.

Simply put, cinemas didn’t engage in this bad behavior (yet) so they escaped regulation.

They also have far more price sensitive customers and they're competing against streaming platforms. It's not like the cost of movies and TV has gone down. But, nobody is going to pay 50 bucks for a seat unless it's a spectacular movie at the best IMAX in the country. I think a seat for Interstellar cost close to that when it came out. The average blockbuster in an average small theater? Physical theaters are already on their last legs. They've banked on lower seat count to put in larger couches/recliners, started to offer alcohol and they still make margin on the food. They're also re-running classic movies for not much more than a rental - The Matrix again? All of Studio Ghibli? Yes please. In many ways it's a great time to go to see movies in the theater. The experience has markedly improved and the cost to consumers hasn't risen that much in absolute terms.

The Regal near me charges about $15 for a normal evening seat, less for a matinee. I'm sure I've paid more in Ticketmaster fees for a single performance.

Where as these are not typical concerns for movie producers and movie theaters which are already operated as a legal cartel.

Movies are fungible and available in masses. Say a big hit name like AC/DC, they're showing up in some entire country once in a decade. The competition to get a ticket for this specific show is insane.

A movie however? There's competition both in time (a showing is booked out? fine, I'll just go a week later), in venues (at least in most cities there's at least two) and there's an effective ceiling on price, particularly as consumers are already struggling financially.

I would suggest that a pre-recorded performance is inherently more fungible.

If movie theater A is going to charge you a $20 fee when you get to the theater, you can just go to theater B later and see the same show.

If you're trying to see the single Chicago date of Tropical Fu Dogs' Coconut Cream tour, well, you either pay the fee or you don't ever see that show.

Ok, so why is the government endorsing hidden fees for fungible products? There is no situation where this benefits anyone but shareholders.

The best faith thing I can think of here is that these rules are requiring that live events do much more than "just" display the full price. For example in ads they _must_ show the all inclusive price.

An example of a thing that movie theaters can do that live event shows can no longer do is say "a ticket costs $14", while in reality there's a booking fee to cover card payments if you pay online, but you can walk into a movie theater and pay just $14.

I think the FTC is saying that while there might be good faith reasons to have booking fees, the industry clearly is using this stuff in bad faith so the industry no longer has this sort of good faith "out" to simplify messaging on pricing.

The live event people are far more odious and abusive. They operate monopolies, but modern American law has been perverted to be unable to recognize that.

This works until Theater A signs an exclusivity deal with the publisher of that pre-recorded performance, such that going to Theater B to see the same show is not possible because Theater B is not legally permitted to show it.

Granted, such exclusivity deals are rare (because generally publishers want to maximize their revenue rather than artificially constrain it), but not unheard of (for example: films made specifically for IMAX's fancy setups).

> Granted, such exclusivity deals are rare (because generally publishers want to maximize their revenue rather than artificially constrain it),

Well, also there was US v. Paramount Pictures [1], which prohibited film production companies from showing their films exclusively at their owned theaters. And follow-on rulings like Bigelow vs RKO Radio Pictures [2], that more or less established that distributing films preferentially is also unacceptable.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pic....

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigelow_v._RKO_Radio_Pictures,....

The consent decree from US v Paramount actually expired a couple of years ago. Not sure how that affects the other rulings.

>If you're trying to see the single Chicago date of Tropical Fu Dogs' Coconut Cream tour, well, you either pay the fee or you don't ever see that show.

Isn't that an argument for stronger disclosure laws for pre-recorded performances? If there's a monopoly, deceptive pricing wouldn't do much because the monopolist is still your only choice. but if it's a competitive marketplace, deceptive pricing might actually lead to consumers choosing worse providers.

There is also an element of repeated games and reputation of the provider.

I think that it is simply because the situation is less problematic than with live events.

In free countries, and especially the US when it comes to trade, the idea is that people can do whatever they want unless it causes a problem, and if it causes a problem, they will pass the minimum amount of regulation needed to address the problem.

My opinion as a consumer would be to ban all hidden fees in all industries, including taxes and tipping when it is expected. But lawmakers in the US consider it not enough of a problem to restrict the freedoms of businesses doing this, so they take a more targeted approach.

That sounds more like a civil law vs common law distinction.

In a civil law country if something causes a problem, the legislative branch would be expected to come up with a general solution. (eg https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/unfair-treat...)

In a common law country, if something causes a problem an executive agency or a judge would be expected to figure out a solution that doesn’t set a precedent that is too wide and general.

Corruption makes it magically less of a problem.

how often do you get extra fees on a pre-recorded performance? Aside from sales tax, my guess would be, for me it's been zero times.

If you buy tickets online, Regal adds a small fee. It’s like $2.

The issue is LiveNation adds $80 in some cases.

The closest I can think of is people paying for amazon's streaming service, and realizing that most of the shows and movies on the service require various amounts of money to watch on top of the monthly fee they're already being charged. Netflix (and almost every other streaming service) had already set an expectation that paying for a streaming service would be enough to watch the shows offered on that service.

That said, back when I actually had prime it was only ever for the shipping so I never saw how amazon advertised their streaming service to people. Maybe the ads actually said "Sign up to Prime Video today for $187 and get access to 20% of the shows on the platform as well as an opportunity to pay even more for the other 80% of the titles!"

I've also seen random mentions of spotify having hidden fees, but I've never used the service and have no idea if they have them or ever have had them.

I'm assuming that "short-term rental" means your standard "night or two" hotel rooms (not just extended say).

It sounds like it, from the report.

I remember staying in hotels in Japan, and they would say 1,600 Yen per night, and ... I get the bill for two nights, and it's 3,200 Yen.

Not so, US hotels.

Short term rentals have different legal definitions depending on the locality, but generally they are defined.

"Short-term rental" is usually something you'd find on Airbnb or VRBO, not a hotel like a Marriott or Hyatt property, which are classified as "hotels".

They mention "hotels," in the report, but don't get specific as to services offered.

Yea, hotels are covered.

Examples of covered short-term lodging include: Temporary sleeping accommodations at a hotel, motel, inn, short-term rental, vacation rental, or other place of lodging; Home shares and vacation rentals offered through platforms (like Airbnb or VRBO); Discounted extended stays at a hotel.

Examples of lodging that are not covered include: Long-term or other rental housing that involves an ongoing landlord-tenant relationship; Short-term extensions to leases offered by rental housing providers; Temporary corporate housing offered by an apartment community under the same conditions as long-term leases.

Airbnb is really bad about this. Advertising lodging for $100 and then suddenly when you go to book there's an additional $100/night of fees.

Hotels can be even worse. They will add a "resort fee" when you show up. You can refuse to pay, and then have nowhere to stay.

Hotels don’t charge a cleaning fee, then fine you for not ckeaning.

Omg is that really a thing? I've never witnessed it

It's probably not industry-wide, but I could see some places doing that.

They really let lodging providers get away with murder.

Airbnb hosts are notorious for it.

I was on a business trip once and remember seeing something in the fine print of the rental agreement that they wouldn’t auto-charge me for my (unused) safe if I requested it at the front desk. It was like $5, and I only bothered because it wasn’t my money.

Bet most people never even see that though

I was thinking about Japan too. In situations like store prices, Japan is pretty transparent, having the total price including taxes displayed up front. But for various live shows/concerts there's typically a mandatory "drink fee" of 500 or 600 yen, cash only, that you pay separate to your ticket. (The ticket can usually though not always be paid with a card on a site, sometimes with a benefit of a small discount for purchasing at least a day early, minus a CC processing fee.) The drink fee is usually listed in the advertising for the event, though, so it's not as hidden as some of the hidden fees this new rule is trying to address, but it's still always felt odd and the cash-only aspect gives a sense of maybe being tax-dodging related.

I haven't stayed at a 1600 yen capsule hotel before, but my favorite one-step-above (small private rooms, shared bathrooms on each floor) hostel-lite, which is usually two to three times that amount (when they have availability, I think too many other people discovered it), started charging like a 100 yen towel exchange fee if you wanted a fresh towel during your stay. Then at bigger hotels you start getting into extra taxes (a few hundred yen per night) when your rate exceeds 10,000 yen. Especially when your rate fluctuates over a stay, it's just a weird small amount of extra hassle you have to pay when you check in separately from the online system, though the systems do usually mention somewhere that there might be additional tax related fees when you arrive. Still, it all feels pretty smooth vs. US hotels where if they include for example any snacks in the room or drinks in the fridge you don't even want to touch them for fear of a surprise $20+ charge later. (A work friend did successfully win against a hotel that tried to charge him drink fees; their "smart" fridge detected he removed some drinks from the fridge to make room for his stuff, it did not detect that he put them back, and these weren't the kind of drinks that would spoil if left out.)

The 1,600¥ was an example, but we regularly stayed at the Shinagawa Prince, which was generally 1,900¥ per night, but that may no longer be the case. Also, since I worked for a Japanese company, we may have gotten discounts.

I hope this includes “resort fees” at Vegas hotels.

I'm glad to see this will be taking effect soon, but I'll hold my excitement until I see some examples of companies violating the rule also being hit with consequences significant enough for it to actually matter.

> Also included in the FTC’s new FAQ are the types of fees that can be excluded, such as taxes or government fees, shipping charges, and charges for optional goods or services people may select to buy as part of the same transaction.

Most of those, especially taxes, should be included as well.

It's interesting how they put effort into the regulation, but then decided to put a little more, just to needlessly water it down and make it worsw.

Why not ban hidden fees altogether?

I wish they would ban the random surcharges that get added to prices of many business-to-business goods, like fuel, energy, environmental, hazmat, etc. They're unpredictable and generally unrelated to anything, just a way of hiding the final price, and they make it hard to do the unit accounting.

Beginning when I was only 14 in 1986, I used to attend a lot of concerts. A lot of them. And they were not particularly popular concerts, though most were in larger venues such as sports arenas and amphitheaters. So I was usually able to score decent tickets without too much cutthroat camping-in-line or anything. Even in those days, most all of the tickets were sold through TicketMaster. Our main outlet was on the second floor of a Montgomery Ward store in the mall, right there among all the clothing in the department store, for no obvious reason.

Now in those days there were a couple of fees tacked on to ticket prices, but of course they were typically opaque already because even the base would depend on where we wanted to sit in the venue. So we didn't squirm too much when there were "facility fees" and "convenience fees" added and so forth. If possible, I would directly approach the venue's box office for the best deal, though.

It was interesting, because as the years wore on, I became interested in more obscure music, and that translated to ever-smaller venues, and more informal ticket purchases.

By 1999 I had acquired my "dream job" of clerk at Tower Records, and I was able to get up-close and personal with a real TicketMaster terminal (which was accessed in exactly the same way, with arcane text commands) and by that time my concert-being activities were being strictly curtailed. But I understood how terrible the market had become, the layers of fees that got tacked on, and the financial pain of wanting to see our favorite bands was increasing. I mean, in the "good old days" each seat was $40, maximum. These $250 packages with parking fees extra, that's abominable.

As for short-term rentals, while I've embraced the new food delivery services and ride-sharing over taxis, I never felt like adopting short-term rentals over hotels. For reasons of insurance, safety, and billing, among other things. So I'm thankful that the FTC is doing stuff about both of these industries. I hope that this regulation will bring about some lasting change and consumer confidence.

It’s a pretty limited rule in that (emphasis mine)

“The Rule prohibits bait-and-switch pricing and other tactics used to hide total prices and mislead people about fees in the live-event ticketing and short-term lodging industries.”

A lot of ticket sites have already implemented this, I think its a welcome change especially in choosing if something is within my budget

The fees themselves are still ridiculous though

Can we get this applied to Turo? Find a car for 100/day. Try and book for 5 days. Ends up being $1000 once Turo adds its fees.

How long until this is undone?

Awesome, now they should include the costs from the tariffs!

Ok, now do restaurants!

Okay so I'm not crazy because I swore this was a Biden era policy.

The FTC is an independent regulatory agency. The president has almost no powers and little oversight when it comes to these agencies.

More appropriately this is a Lina Khan era policy. She had a rocky start but her focus and conviction was unparalleled by any previous iteration of the agency. So much so that she enjoyed more bipartisan congressional support and approval than most staffers in recent memory.

From Wikipedia: Nominated in March 2021; Served in office June 15, 2021 – January 20, 2025

Coincidental timing, I'm sure!

100% of the votes against confirmation were Republican. Fewer than half the R Senators voted to confirm her. Her predecessor, Obama nominee Edith Ramirez, was confirmed unanimously.

I suggest we let the different parties take responsibility and/or credit for their decisions.

> 100% of the votes against confirmation were Republican

And so no Democrat voted against her? Does a party line split ever look good regardless of how it breaks?

> Fewer than half the R Senators voted to confirm her.

Anti-trust issues have become more popular lately. Senators come and go. Like I said she had a rocky start.

> Obama nominee Edith Ramirez, was confirmed unanimously

And she did nothing. Do you see the connection between those two facts? I mean it's not like there was a bunch of consumer problems during Obama's term or anything. :|

> let the different parties take responsibility and/or credit for their decisions.

Party politics are just exceptionally dumb. They don't even reasonably reflect how decisions are actually made on the hill. It devolves into a weird left vs. right fight between citizens while the actual meaningful policies and civil servants are entirely ignored. I don't sense a way to improve anything by doing this.

The most damaging partisan politics is the one where we insist on making Republicans look better then they are, again and again.

That is how they became the party fully in support of Trumps policies.

I didn't make it a left vs right thing. The people who nominate, confirm, and force out FTC chairs did.

It just so happens that all the people who pushed against this particular FTC chair are on one side of the aisle. That wasn't up to me!

> I don't sense a way to improve anything by doing this.

In my experience, step 1 of solving a problem is a sober assessment of the facts. We elect people and they make decisions. I'm pointing out what decisions they made.

The sovereignty of independent agencies is HEAVILY in question at the moment. Consider arguably the MOST independent agency (the FED) and how recent threats, while perhaps not DIRECTLY influencing policy potentially introduced bias or coercion to future FED actions.

Sometimes the threat or suggestion of something, like DOGE firing an employee who doesn't grant them immediate root access, is enough to subvert the entire system.

Time will tell if independent agencies are as independent as some choose to believe.

lol.

Lina Khan was appointed to the FTC by Joe Biden as part of a broader decision to allow Elizabeth Warren expanded oversight of economic regulation as a way to coalition build with the somewhat more progressive (but still pretty establishment) parts of the Democratic party.

Lina Khan was Biden's pick because she was Warren's pick.

To be clear about my own biases, I think Lina Khan was a fantastic pick and did an amazing job and would have done even greater things if left in place, but to act like she was a bipartisan choice (beyond, say, JD Vance throwing out some rhetoric on the campaign trail) is revisionist history.

> beyond, say, JD Vance throwing out some rhetoric on the campaign trail

JD Vance. Matt Gaetz. Josh Hawley. Ken Buck. They literally started calling them Khanservatives. There is strong anti-trust sentiment in parts of the Republican party. Just like there are "somewhat more progressive parts of the Democratic party."

> is revisionist history.

Or the story is more subtle and nuanced than people care to admit.

They aren't in the mood for any trust busting. All they want is to punish "woke" companies. They yell about facebook and google because those companies were against letting you call LGTBQ people retards.

I'm still waiting for those supposed "anti-trust republicans" to demonstrate any actual awareness of the anti-competitive situation going on or any nuance beyond "These are blue state institutions therefore woke therefore we should attack them".

Where have any of these names made statements negative of other company's market positions for example? Where is their insistence that Amazon is a trust that should probably be busted?

I hope things continue to be that way, but have you read this?

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/ensu...

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43910815 - not a criticism! It's just that we pinned the related-thread comment to the top and I want to save real estate up there.

Live Nation donated to Harris, not Trump.[1] This is their punishment.

[1] https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/live-nation-entertainment/s...

There's no teeth to any of these direct orders and any clever lawyer can probably argue-away all the provisions listed in the article.

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