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The issue is so simple. The companies claim that it would impose heavy costs on them. Well. So it either costs the companies or it costs the consumer. But the c
by Luctct 3y ago
The issue is so simple. The companies claim that it would impose heavy costs on them. Well. So it either costs the companies or it costs the consumer. But the consumer is exercising their free choice while the companies are ignoring said choice and forcing them to pay for something they don't want. That's textbook extortion.
Easy solution: impose crippling fines or maybe a little prison sentence here and there for extortion. Why not? That's what it is. Do it and watch how fast the mobsters, I mean, the companies will change their tune.
- andsoitis 3y ago> Easy solution: impose crippling fines or maybe a little prison sentence here and there for extortion. Why not? That's what it is. How is it extortion? Who is being coerced and how?
- blitz_skull 3y agoPretty sure they directly stated it—the consumer is being coerced. Deceptive tactics to make it hard to stop paying for something you don't want is coercive and deceptive behavior.
- synetic 3y agoYou are correct on the pedantic point of whether or not it is “extortion” under existing laws. Laws can be changed and definitions changed. Or use a different term. The essence of the point is clear. Why nitpick on whether or not “extortion” is the correct word?
- sonicshadow 3y agoBecause this is HN and it's more important to launch definition critiques than to discuss substance ever. I think half of HN came from the horrible world of high school policy debate
- lamontcg 3y agoYeah like the thread yesterday about the teenager that was detained by the airlines -- only legally he was likely never "detained" but we have no good word for the not-legally-detained-but-taken-to-a-room-and-interrogated action that actually happened to him. Since we have no good word for that it becomes trivial for pedants to think they've won an argument while they piss everyone else off arguing over definitions.
- sonicshadow 3y agoI wasted too much of my time arguing that crap. This site is full of book-smart people that are not as smart as they think they are. They just happen to find a bunch of neckbeards who also haven't touched grass in the last week.
- ryandrake 3y agoRemember, you're talking about a community composed largely of software developers, whose livelihoods are built on their ability to find a missing negative sign in 100,000 lines of code. When faced with a large paragraph of text full of complexity and nuance, they're naturally going to find that one word that's wrong and pedantically nit-pick it to death, ignoring the overall point and substance being conveyed.
- synetic 3y agoThank you for this. I got a laugh out of it. I particularly liked the 100,000 lines of code line.
- sonicshadow 3y agoLol this even fits with how they do PR reviews and code critiques. When I submit a long PR for review, I know that none of the comments will be substantive or useful. They'll just be meta-critiques about how the headers aren't alphabetized or private members need to come after public. Not about the actual content.
- ryaneager 3y agoA company be responsible for their actions? Where in heaven did you get such a dastardly idea?
- Justsignedup 3y agoThe solution to like 90% of all problems: The CEO is legally responsible for every illegal action taken by the company. This is also true for all managers down to the department that caused the illegal action. That's it. Nothing else. You'll see a massive amount of bad behavior from companies instantly stop. When your neck is on the line, you won't do it. Or you'll quit. However given history, this will never occur. Unfortunately thats now how we think of commerce, and so companies can try to act as they please with socialized risk and all gain.
- tehwebguy 3y agoThere isn’t some bug that can be fixed that would suddenly make this work. DAs, states attorneys and attorneys general have all the power in the world to make life hell for any company doing bad things. They just don’t want to. Think about that and consider the cascading consequences you’d face for years in most states if you let your driver’s license expire and get pulled over.
- treecrypto 3y agoWouldn't this make it possible for a disgruntled employee to do something illegal, and falsely claim they did it on the company's instructions?
- masfuerte 3y agoThe situation we have now is companies setting targets that can only be met by breaking the law and then acting innocent when the employees do. I don't know how we fix this.
- GolfPopper 3y agoMake the board liable as well, under both civil and criminal law.
- cogman10 3y ago> The companies claim that it would impose heavy costs on them. Which is funny because they spend ungodly amounts of money staffing and fielding the phone calls for cancelation. The actual cost is literally hooking their almost certainly existing "cancel subscription" api up to a UX for the user. They've already done 99% of the work since these companies all support cancelation.