6 ms·

Advertising anything as "unlimited" when you obviously can't provide an unlimited amount of it should be illegal.

by bakugo 3y ago

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Advertising anything as "unlimited" when you obviously can't provide an unlimited amount of it should be illegal What could one provide an infinite amount of? Shouldn't that empty set inform the reasonable interpretation of "unlimited" in this context?
- wccrawford 3y ago
  "But your honor, it's obvious that we can't actually provide what we said we'd provide, so they should have assumed we would do less than that." No. It's not on the customer to decide what a reasonable interpretation of the company's offering is. It's up to the business to inform the customer clearly.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > not on the customer to decide what a reasonable interpretation of the company's offering is. It's up to the business to inform the customer clearly. Clarity is in the eye of the beholder. This is why we have reasonableness standards: it's impractical to specify ex ante every term of a trade to infinite precision. Most people understand the intent of the term "unlimited" here, and given the fraction of accounts affected, this seems fine. (Also, until this announcement, it was unlimited. They're just discontinuing that. Unlimited doesn't mean unlimited forever.)
    - SoftTalker 3y ago
      Words mean things. Unlimited means without limit. If that isn't what you are offering, use another word.
      - ZephyrBlu 3y ago
        I don't think you want to live in a world where "words mean things" in the way you're describing. It would make everyone's life extremely difficult.
        dingaling 3y ago
        I think that world is preferable to one in which the meaning of words is different to their definition.
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        Nobody is suggesting that words be outside their definition. It's that the definitions are not super super narrow. And the other issue is that one person's interpretation of a word's most narrow definition is not going to be objectively right.
      - sanderjd 3y ago
        This is not actually how legal systems work, because they are not actually run by literalist computer nerds like us :)
        SoftTalker 3y ago
        I get it, but these companies could save themselves this kind of headache by just being more accurate about what they're selling. Like if I bought "unlimited" streaming vs. "Streaming limited to one screen at a time for one user" I'd be much happier about finding out that I can't watch one show in the bedroom and a different one in the living room than I would with my "unlimited" service.
        sanderjd 3y ago
        I don't disagree at all. I'm just saying that the legal system actually is equipped to deal with this kind of vagueness, which is generally a good thing.
  - xboxnolifes 3y ago
    > But your honor, it's obvious that we can't actually provide what we said we'd provide, so they should have assumed we would do less than that. That's a real defense and has precedent.
- Marsymars 3y ago
  > What could one provide an infinite amount of? I don't think that I'd parse "unlimited" and "infinite" in the same way. Some things are naturally limited by rate delivery, and advertising "unlimited" seems fine. e.g. I don't see a problem with advertising a phone plan as having "unlimited" minutes, rather than specifying a limit of 10,080 minutes per week. The number of minutes are not infinite, but neither are they limited by the carrier.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > I don't see a problem with advertising a phone plan as having "unlimited" minutes, rather than specifying a limit of 10,080 minutes per week If you buy thousands of these phones, hook them up to a modem, and use them to send and receive information over the carrier's airwaves 24/7, you will overwhelm your tower.
    - Marsymars 3y ago
      Yes, and? Everything that is supplied by physical processes has some physical limit. It's fine to use "unlimited" to refer to things that are subject to physical constraints, it's not the same thing as "infinite".
- turtles3 3y ago
  If you take unlimited in its most literal meaning then no, you can't provide unlimited anything. However, I think there's a difference between saying you provide unlimited storage, and a SaaS tier supporting 'unlimited' users. Yea it's true that if someone tried to truly exercise the latter, for example by allocating several trillions of bot accounts, then for sure you're going to get a call from the provider politely instructing you to desist. And I think that would be reasonable of them, and the marketing should not be considered deceptive. The question is, does the same logic apply to TBs of storage? Is there anything that distinguishes these two use cases? I guess the marketing offer of 'unlimited' could perhaps be read as 'all that 99.9% of customers ever need, but if you're one of the remaining 0.1%, you have to pay extra'. That is to say, perhaps 'unlimited' could be read as a class of user that encompasses the vast majority of cases, as opposed to a literal resource quota. Is this reasonable or deceptive?
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > perhaps 'unlimited' could be read as a class of user that encompasses the vast majority of cases, as opposed to a literal resource quota. Is this reasonable or deceptive? Depends on the facts and circumstances. When cellular providers throttled unlimited plans, I felt like it was deceptive. In this case, I do not. I am curious if those cut off genuinely feel they were deceived.
pjc50 3y ago
It's inevitable, isn't it? Especially with computers, if you advertise something as "unlimited" people will consume unlimited amounts of it, then you find that has real costs. I'm surprised to hear that Chia is still going, though. That was one of the worst excesses of the crypto boom, driving up prices of storage for real users.
gochi 3y ago
Yes it should, so many places use it when they actually just mean "until our costs start getting overboard since we didn't account for more than 0.0000002% of people to use above X limits", or with so much fine print that they should be forced to make that fine print regular print. It's a nasty tactic, and gives people the wrong expectations and in turn ruins markets to all start using such terms to offer "competitive" unlimited tiers.
lallysingh 3y ago
Nothing's truly unlimited in the universe, so either your law bans the use of the term or accepts a finite universe.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  Unlimited is not infinity. Unlimited does exist. This river does not have infinity water, but it will fill this glass unlimited times.
  - lallysingh 3y ago
    Still a limited flow rate into the glass.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      The product offering always has a scope. Unlimited applies to some specific attribute, it doesn't mean you can do anything.
      - lallysingh 3y ago
        Wait we're not dealing in ridiculous absolute terms? There's should be a law against that.
nine_k 3y ago
Business like to advertise things as "unlimited" when there are some natural limits. There are "all you can eat" restaurants, but nobody can eat 100 kg of food. My internet provider and my mobile provider give me unlimited traffic, but it's limited by the effective speed (and the mobile traffic speed is clamped after several gigabytes per month). But when a natural limitation is lifted, the businesses have to reconsider their "unlimited" policies.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Ekaros 3y ago
Yes. Just put a sensible limit there. Like up to 10 TB.

Advertising anything as "unlimited" when you obviously can't provide an unlimited amount of it should be illegal.

by bakugo 3y ago

Advertising anything as "unlimited" when you obviously can't provide an unlimited amount of it should be illegal.

> Advertising anything as "unlimited" when you obviously can't provide an unlimited amount of it should be illegal What could one provide an infinite amount of? Shouldn't that empty set inform the reasonable interpretation of "unlimited" in this context?

wccrawford 3y ago
"But your honor, it's obvious that we can't actually provide what we said we'd provide, so they should have assumed we would do less than that." No. It's not on the customer to decide what a reasonable interpretation of the company's offering is. It's up to the business to inform the customer clearly.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > not on the customer to decide what a reasonable interpretation of the company's offering is. It's up to the business to inform the customer clearly. Clarity is in the eye of the beholder. This is why we have reasonableness standards: it's impractical to specify ex ante every term of a trade to infinite precision. Most people understand the intent of the term "unlimited" here, and given the fraction of accounts affected, this seems fine. (Also, until this announcement, it was unlimited. They're just discontinuing that. Unlimited doesn't mean unlimited forever.)
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    Words mean things. Unlimited means without limit. If that isn't what you are offering, use another word.
    - ZephyrBlu 3y ago
      I don't think you want to live in a world where "words mean things" in the way you're describing. It would make everyone's life extremely difficult.
      - dingaling 3y ago
        I think that world is preferable to one in which the meaning of words is different to their definition.
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        Nobody is suggesting that words be outside their definition. It's that the definitions are not super super narrow. And the other issue is that one person's interpretation of a word's most narrow definition is not going to be objectively right.
    - sanderjd 3y ago
      This is not actually how legal systems work, because they are not actually run by literalist computer nerds like us :)
      - SoftTalker 3y ago
        I get it, but these companies could save themselves this kind of headache by just being more accurate about what they're selling. Like if I bought "unlimited" streaming vs. "Streaming limited to one screen at a time for one user" I'd be much happier about finding out that I can't watch one show in the bedroom and a different one in the living room than I would with my "unlimited" service.
        sanderjd 3y ago
        I don't disagree at all. I'm just saying that the legal system actually is equipped to deal with this kind of vagueness, which is generally a good thing.
- xboxnolifes 3y ago
  > But your honor, it's obvious that we can't actually provide what we said we'd provide, so they should have assumed we would do less than that. That's a real defense and has precedent.
Marsymars 3y ago
> What could one provide an infinite amount of? I don't think that I'd parse "unlimited" and "infinite" in the same way. Some things are naturally limited by rate delivery, and advertising "unlimited" seems fine. e.g. I don't see a problem with advertising a phone plan as having "unlimited" minutes, rather than specifying a limit of 10,080 minutes per week. The number of minutes are not infinite, but neither are they limited by the carrier.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > I don't see a problem with advertising a phone plan as having "unlimited" minutes, rather than specifying a limit of 10,080 minutes per week If you buy thousands of these phones, hook them up to a modem, and use them to send and receive information over the carrier's airwaves 24/7, you will overwhelm your tower.
  - Marsymars 3y ago
    Yes, and? Everything that is supplied by physical processes has some physical limit. It's fine to use "unlimited" to refer to things that are subject to physical constraints, it's not the same thing as "infinite".
turtles3 3y ago
If you take unlimited in its most literal meaning then no, you can't provide unlimited anything. However, I think there's a difference between saying you provide unlimited storage, and a SaaS tier supporting 'unlimited' users. Yea it's true that if someone tried to truly exercise the latter, for example by allocating several trillions of bot accounts, then for sure you're going to get a call from the provider politely instructing you to desist. And I think that would be reasonable of them, and the marketing should not be considered deceptive. The question is, does the same logic apply to TBs of storage? Is there anything that distinguishes these two use cases? I guess the marketing offer of 'unlimited' could perhaps be read as 'all that 99.9% of customers ever need, but if you're one of the remaining 0.1%, you have to pay extra'. That is to say, perhaps 'unlimited' could be read as a class of user that encompasses the vast majority of cases, as opposed to a literal resource quota. Is this reasonable or deceptive?
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > perhaps 'unlimited' could be read as a class of user that encompasses the vast majority of cases, as opposed to a literal resource quota. Is this reasonable or deceptive? Depends on the facts and circumstances. When cellular providers throttled unlimited plans, I felt like it was deceptive. In this case, I do not. I am curious if those cut off genuinely feel they were deceived.

pjc50 3y ago

It's inevitable, isn't it? Especially with computers, if you advertise something as "unlimited" people will consume unlimited amounts of it, then you find that has real costs. I'm surprised to hear that Chia is still going, though. That was one of the worst excesses of the crypto boom, driving up prices of storage for real users.

gochi 3y ago

Yes it should, so many places use it when they actually just mean "until our costs start getting overboard since we didn't account for more than 0.0000002% of people to use above X limits", or with so much fine print that they should be forced to make that fine print regular print. It's a nasty tactic, and gives people the wrong expectations and in turn ruins markets to all start using such terms to offer "competitive" unlimited tiers.

lallysingh 3y ago

Nothing's truly unlimited in the universe, so either your law bans the use of the term or accepts a finite universe.

Dylan16807 3y ago
Unlimited is not infinity. Unlimited does exist. This river does not have infinity water, but it will fill this glass unlimited times.
- lallysingh 3y ago
  Still a limited flow rate into the glass.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    The product offering always has a scope. Unlimited applies to some specific attribute, it doesn't mean you can do anything.
    - lallysingh 3y ago
      Wait we're not dealing in ridiculous absolute terms? There's should be a law against that.

nine_k 3y ago

Business like to advertise things as "unlimited" when there are some natural limits. There are "all you can eat" restaurants, but nobody can eat 100 kg of food. My internet provider and my mobile provider give me unlimited traffic, but it's limited by the effective speed (and the mobile traffic speed is clamped after several gigabytes per month). But when a natural limitation is lifted, the businesses have to reconsider their "unlimited" policies.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Ekaros 3y ago

Yes. Just put a sensible limit there. Like up to 10 TB.