4 ms·

I would like to see 1 reason you would find that this UI restriction would be a bad thing.

jjk166 5y ago
Let's say you subscribe to something as part of a 3rd party bundle, like say you sign up for newsletter A and there's a whole bunch of other options and you leave newsletter B selected to also subscribe to that. Then the workflow for unsubscribing from B would be going through the subscription workflow for A. This would be bad for all parties: it may be difficult or even impossible for the B group to change A's subscription workflow, group A likely suffers increased churn as pissed off consumers have its subscription manager open anyways, but most importantly it's incredibly unintuitive for the consumer to go through A to change B, especially if they are only loosely related. While maybe rare for spam email, it's a pretty common scenario for downloaded software. But more generally, there are lots of workflows that are substantially easier in one direction than the reverse. You'd either need to ban all such UIs that are directional, or you open up a huge loophole for bad actors.
- Spivak 5y ago
  I'm gonna need one concrete example of this because I cannot for the life of me think of a single instance where bundled subscriptions, "buying Showtime through your cable provider" shouldn't be required to allow cancellation through the place you bought it. Sure, it sucks day one that 3rd party sellers don't have cancellation flows but it's not an intractable problem.
  - jjk166 5y ago
    You misunderstand, having the option to cancel through the place you bought it is perfectly reasonable, the problem is when you can only cancel showtime via your cable provider because that's how you happened to purchase it. For example, I recently purchased a new car. I had to go there in person and do a whole bunch of paperwork. While I was there, I registered my new vehicle, got an insurance plan for it, and financing for the auto loan. Imagine if to change insurance providers, I had to go back to the dealership and spend 3 hours doing paperwork because that was the workflow by which I just happened to get my last provider. It would be absurd, and I'd probably never go through the trouble even if my insurance provider was more expensive than competitors.
    - handrous 5y ago
      Does... the rule prohibit other methods of cancellation?
      - jjk166 5y ago
        It requires just the one specific method of cancellation. Good actors will have multiple methods to make things easier for people, but the rules aren't for them. The rules are for the bad actors who don't want to make it easy, and who will do the absolute minimum required. As I said before, the issue is the creation of the loophole: by specifying that the same workflow must be used, by making your workflow highly directional, you can comply with the rule while still screwing people over. Instead by focusing on how easy the workflow is, you regulate what people actually care about. If unsubscribing via the third party actually is as easy as subscribing, that's good enough; but if it isn't they have to implement better options.
        xg15 5y ago
        I can understand that. I think the reasoning for tight restrictions is mostly to minimize the opportunity for dark patterns. So instead of saying "cancelling must be possible through the same workflow as subscribing", regulators could also mandate something like the following: Option A: Design a web unsubscribe workflow once as part of the regulation process, consult with UX expert to ensure it's accessible and low-friction, then mandate that providers must provide an unsubscribe flow that very closely resembles the designed workflow (using the same steps, same visual assets, etc). Option B: Design a web API for unsubscribing, mandate that providers implement it and leave the UI to browser vendors or other third parties that have no interest in adding friction to the process. (This unfortunately risks a conflict of interest if browser vendors themselves offer subscriptions) I'd honestly have wished that the EU had used one of those approaches for GDPR consent management - then we wouldn't have the current mess of intentionally tedious consent dialogs.
- HelixEndeavor 5y ago
  Well, that sounds like a scenario we should prevent with legislation.

Let's say you subscribe to something as part of a 3rd party bundle, like say you sign up for newsletter A and there's a whole bunch of other options and you leave newsletter B selected to also subscribe to that. Then the workflow for unsubscribing from B would be going through the subscription workflow for A. This would be bad for all parties: it may be difficult or even impossible for the B group to change A's subscription workflow, group A likely suffers increased churn as pissed off consumers have its subscription manager open anyways, but most importantly it's incredibly unintuitive for the consumer to go through A to change B, especially if they are only loosely related. While maybe rare for spam email, it's a pretty common scenario for downloaded software. But more generally, there are lots of workflows that are substantially easier in one direction than the reverse. You'd either need to ban all such UIs that are directional, or you open up a huge loophole for bad actors.

Spivak 5y ago
I'm gonna need one concrete example of this because I cannot for the life of me think of a single instance where bundled subscriptions, "buying Showtime through your cable provider" shouldn't be required to allow cancellation through the place you bought it. Sure, it sucks day one that 3rd party sellers don't have cancellation flows but it's not an intractable problem.
- jjk166 5y ago
  You misunderstand, having the option to cancel through the place you bought it is perfectly reasonable, the problem is when you can only cancel showtime via your cable provider because that's how you happened to purchase it. For example, I recently purchased a new car. I had to go there in person and do a whole bunch of paperwork. While I was there, I registered my new vehicle, got an insurance plan for it, and financing for the auto loan. Imagine if to change insurance providers, I had to go back to the dealership and spend 3 hours doing paperwork because that was the workflow by which I just happened to get my last provider. It would be absurd, and I'd probably never go through the trouble even if my insurance provider was more expensive than competitors.
  - handrous 5y ago
    Does... the rule prohibit other methods of cancellation?
    - jjk166 5y ago
      It requires just the one specific method of cancellation. Good actors will have multiple methods to make things easier for people, but the rules aren't for them. The rules are for the bad actors who don't want to make it easy, and who will do the absolute minimum required. As I said before, the issue is the creation of the loophole: by specifying that the same workflow must be used, by making your workflow highly directional, you can comply with the rule while still screwing people over. Instead by focusing on how easy the workflow is, you regulate what people actually care about. If unsubscribing via the third party actually is as easy as subscribing, that's good enough; but if it isn't they have to implement better options.
      - xg15 5y ago
        I can understand that. I think the reasoning for tight restrictions is mostly to minimize the opportunity for dark patterns. So instead of saying "cancelling must be possible through the same workflow as subscribing", regulators could also mandate something like the following: Option A: Design a web unsubscribe workflow once as part of the regulation process, consult with UX expert to ensure it's accessible and low-friction, then mandate that providers must provide an unsubscribe flow that very closely resembles the designed workflow (using the same steps, same visual assets, etc). Option B: Design a web API for unsubscribing, mandate that providers implement it and leave the UI to browser vendors or other third parties that have no interest in adding friction to the process. (This unfortunately risks a conflict of interest if browser vendors themselves offer subscriptions) I'd honestly have wished that the EU had used one of those approaches for GDPR consent management - then we wouldn't have the current mess of intentionally tedious consent dialogs.
HelixEndeavor 5y ago
Well, that sounds like a scenario we should prevent with legislation.