The White House is calling their push the “Time is Money” initiative.

54 points

At the minimum they should be required to provide the same exact means to cancel as they provide a means to subscribe. Business models that involve easy online subscriptions but require calling an 800 number during business hours to cancel should be fined into insolvency

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20 points

That’s actually the plan. If it takes one click to subscribe it needs to be no more than one click to unsubscribe.

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4 points

Amazon Prime Video Canada let me instantly (aka accidentally) subscribe to one of their extra channels. I had to go through a chat to cancel it.

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2 points

The problem is enforcement.

Sure, one click…that’s on a hidden div, that can only be accessed if your mouse does a very particular movement, one that mimics what you did during sign up.

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8 points

Nah lawyers will be all over that, free money.

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1 point

If we would have more people like her: https://youtu.be/VT5TqDWFIis fighting for consumers stuff like that wouldn’t be an issue.

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7 points

At the minimum they should be required to provide the same exact means to cancel as they provide a means to subscribe.

That’s how it is in EU. Per law cancellation has to be as easy as getting the contract, and by the same means.

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6 points

A phone number would be down right convenient. The ones that make you cancel by mail are the devil.

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12 points

NGL, this alone would make the Biden presidency worth it for me. I hope they follow through

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1 point
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2 points

What is time again?

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-9 points

yeah…all the elderly old farts in our government are totally going to put something together that will NOT make problems like that worse.

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3 points

Services have existed for decades. Centuries, even.

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1 point

yes, but not in a digital form like the kinds of subscription services that make it nearly impossible to cancel.

The elderly members of congress won’t know how to help the situation, so it’s overwhelmingly likely that whatever they end up voting on will either be written by people who don’t understand how that stuff works, or, more likely the bill(s) written will be written by lobbying groups

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1 point

They don’t have to understand the intricacies of online services to write a law that says, “It can be no more difficult to cancel a service than it is to initiate the service.”

Yes, the courts would have a right fun time sorting out a poorly written law, but that will be because of legalized bribery lobbyists, not because it’s an actually difficult task.

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