For me: Cancelling paid subscriptions should be as easy as subscribing. I hate the fact that they actively hide the unsubscribe option or that you sometimes should have to write an e-mail if you want to unsubscribe.
For subscriptions, I highly recommend using disposable cards like Privacy.com (no affiliation, just a customer). If I want to try out Prime, or Starz, or a “free until…” promotional offer, I just spin up a card. It’s connected to my bank account, locked to that single merchant, and they can’t charge more than whatever spending limit I put on that card. Honestly, I don’t always even sign in to a service to cancel, it’s much easier to just pause or delete a card, and then they can’t charge you anymore. It’s free for us because they collect a small portion of the transaction amount (like Visa, PayPal, etc)…
Dating sites besieging their users with bots and fake profiles.
In the US, unsubscribing from email spam is legally required to be easy under the CAN-SPAM act. For paid subscription services, I believe they also are required to be as easy to leave as they are to join in the EU and California.
Somewhat related, many dark patterns are treated like fraud.
the CAN-SPAM act
I once wrote a community college paper for my friend in exchange for some work on my car. He had to write a paper on the CAN-SPAM act.
I did the assignment, covered all the requirements, explained it and whatnot. I then wrote a SECOND paper, appended to the end of the first. This second paper also met the length requirements, but was a parody. About the Hormel meat product, Spam. In cans. Can-Spam. I was very proud of it. It was funny.
I kept asking my friend if he ever got feedback from the professor. He never did. It was then that I learned professors often don’t read papers like this, they just assign them to get students to read and practice writing. It made me sad.
I’ve seen a few memes where people go to the canned spam on social media, report their posts: reason: It’s spam
The FTC under Biden was actually craking down on that. It was called the “Click to Cancel” rule, but that was literally a month before the election. :/
Lina Khan was a perhaps once in a lifetime bureaucrat doing good for the people at a rapid pace on normal government timelines and now she’ll probably never get that job or a better one again.
I don’t know how this works in the US, but where I live after a year subscription (let’s say for your internet provider or something). They can only renew per month. So if the year subscription is over you can cancel any service every month and they can’t hit you with any fees.
Back in the day if you’d forgot to cancel your plan you’d be stuck with them for another year. It sucked!
Having the door held open for you while walking towards it but changing directions in the last moment.
Yes, there’s a lot of rules that are out there, but that aren’t actually enforced. Facing the other way in an elevator was one example I remember from social sciences classes.
If I saw someone facing the rear wall/corner of an elevator but not acting unusual in any other way I think I’d feel like I was getting pranked somehow, lmao. I could go in and use the elevator and nothing could happen but one or more people facing the “wrong” way and I’d feel like I was the butt of a joke in some unfathomable way
I think it’s the unnecessary number of turns you’d need to make to actually use the elevator but still face the rear well while using it that makes it feel weird to me, but idk
I mean, it’s the same, you just turn around at the end of the ride as you’re leaving rather than the beginning. But, it’s simply not how it’s done.
EULAs that say ‘using this <whatever> indicates your acceptance of these terms’. Seems like it ought to be illegal but it’s super common.
Surprisingly a lot of clauses in EULAS are and get “stricken” (even though this one still stands).
Paying for anything and then being stopped from owning it should be illegal.
What the fuck am I buying software for if not to own it and have my privacy protected while using it?
Fuck EULA’s and the companies trying to push the boundaries of acceptable behaviour 😤 just for a couple extra bucks selling our data to the highest bidder.
100%. If buying isn’t owning then stealing isn’t theft.
Just because they put it in the terms doesn’t it legal.
Still has a chilling effect on pushback
You know, I’m not actually sure how binding it is, aside from not totally. It must do something or they wouldn’t bother getting pretend consent.
It kinda does make it legal. If you don’t agree to the terms of the product, then you are using it illegally. It sucks, but that’s where the law is. I am typing this on a Linux laptop in Firefox, but those have terms and conditions, too!
That depends on the location/jurisdiction, but I do have a hard time believing that any court would uphold a EULA stating that you have to cook dinner for any Microsoft employee that happens to request it, just because to installed Windows 11.
I believe a fair number of juristictions also invalidate any EULA that’s only viewable after you’ve purchased a product so most software EULAs are worth less than toilet paper anyway.
EULA’s are widely honored and established law. However, anyone can push back on anything they put in an agreement.
To fight Microsoft, you have to fight Microsoft’s lawyers, in Microsoft’s jurisdiction. But you can’t sue them, because you already agreed to arbitration. And you’d have to pay lawyers in what would be a long, drawn out process.
If Microsoft demands things that are incredibly weird like what you describe above, there definitely would be a chance it could be appealed to a court and eventually see a judge. I think it would be a long and expensive process for both sides getting there. And Microsoft’s argument would be, “The user has the option to stop using it.”
There are undoubtedly severance clauses in there, so if a court deems a part of a license illegal, then it is stricken, and the rest of the agreement stands.
So, Microsoft’s lawyers only put things in the agreement that they are 99+% sure of wanting and winning. So they probably won’t request your spleen. They don’t want that. They just want your money, your data, and your eyeballs connected to your brain.
Spam calls. Like, if you’re willing to spend, what, 50 dollars?, you can absolutely destroy people’s sanity with never ending calls from disposable numbers
Technically this is illegal in lots of countries. It’s just hard to enforce afik.
Riding down a mountain road on a bicycle, going 50 mph, without a helmet on.
That is illegal in a bunch of places, riding a bike without a helmet
This is what fascism looks like
Pretty much any tax avoidance loopholes. The more money I have the more I see how ridiculously skewed in favor of the rich everything is. My income is taxed at a lower rate than my capital gains, meaning that not only did I make several thousand dollars last year on stock sales I did literally nothing to earn, but I paid very little on taxes for it. There is also a scheme a friend of mine uses to reduce his tax burden even more by recording losses that only exist on paper by swapping between essentially equivalent assets. The system is designed to punish poor people for being poor and reward rich people for being rich.
A popular scheme I have seen is:
Owner registered and de-facto runs an incorporated Company. Company employs Owner and pays them a small salary (down to state minimum wage even), so Owner minimizes the income tax they pay.
The car Owner drives is owned by the Company for “business purposes”, which allows the car to be operated within 50 miles of the Company (and farther with supplemental insurance). Company counts the car purchase/lease, maintenance, gas as expenses, bringing down the bottom line.
Flights, travel, meals could be paid by the Company, as long as it’s tangentially “business related”.
The house Owner lives in (or several houses for the family) is owned by the Company and is rented to Owner for very cheap, so Company pays the taxes, maintenance, etc, breaking even, or taking a loss on this house. Again, this brings down the company’s bottom line.
Somehow, purchases for a Company can be exempt from sales taxes, too.
In the end, on paper, the Company is barely making any profit, but the Owner might be enjoying a nice car, nice house, and vacations. All for “business purposes” of course. While you pay taxes on your income and purchases like an idiot
I will say a lot of what you’ve discussed here is actually illegal but very rarely enforced. Pretty much every small business owner I know is pulling shit like this but it’s basically never enforced even though it’s illegal fraud.
It gets worse. CEOs take out zero interest, or exteremly low interest loans on corporate assets. They then use the money tax free.
Interest based loans. It’s completely legal to use debt to kick the poor deeper into the gutter so that they can never stand up again.
That actually is illegal.
What surprisingly is legal: dating a 14yo.
Weird country.
Which one?
No
police being able to lie to you
This is illegal in the UK
I’ve had cops lie to me
“Are you an undercover cop” actually works in the UK?
Of course not that’ll be ridiculous… during questioning, arrest etc
The worst one they tell is "We’re cops, were not allowed to lie. "
Fuckers.
I think in the eu we have some legislation about it. I have the feeling of reading about a law like that before. Subscription buttons needing to be as clear as unsubscribe.
Loaning money to your own political campaign and then paying yourself back, including an interest rate set by you, using donor funds.
There are a number of things that are legal here in the US, which would count as corruption in other places.
