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  • Hacker News
  • NYTimes still doesn’t have a single click to cancel! Gotten better now. Hope they learn.
    by gizmodo59
  • While I think this is a good idea, we already have so many different regions to comply with, now we're adding cities....
    by blakeashleyjr
  • > A person making an automatic renewal or continuous service offer to a consumer must provide the consumer with the option to cancel at any time using a simple cancellation mechanism that is as easy to use as the mechanism that the consumer used to provide consent and that is through the same medium that the consumer used to provide consent

    So if a startup lets someone sign up using Stripe, for example, does this mean that they need to have a way to unsubscribe that is as easy as Stripe? Lots of companies have a way to unsubscribe electronically, but it requires logging in to your account, going into settings, saying you want to unsub, and possibly declining various offers to stay.

    Surely at some point a company could cross the line of "a simple cancellation mechanism that is as easy to use as the mechanism the consumer used to provide consent". But where is the line exactly? Surely you don't have to have a big red cancel button on every page of your platform, but at the same time surely it can't be hidden 8 levels down in the settings.

    Some examples would be helpful to let businesses and consumers know what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.

    by apparent
  • California has had this for a while, and it's a pretty good feature. Until then it was a nightmare to unsubscribe from newspapers like the WSJ or the NYT. Now (well, for a few years now) it's trivial. Hopefully this will be federally available in the next few years.
    by arjie
  • Its incredible how much changes Mandani is doing to benefit the citizens. I start to wonder what the prior mayors was even doing.
    by Alifatisk
  • Look out for the "Digital Fairness Act", which will be tabled by the European Commission in November. It is expected to include the same "Click to Cancel" principle continent-wide.

    Source: I'm an EU digital policy analyst in Brussels.

    by Anonboxis
  • It seems like a good rule, and I am eager to see what NYC’s enforcement is going to look like. I have historically been disappointed (as a life-long resident) by the discontinuity between the city’s eagerness to legislate and its recalcitrance around enforcement, particularly when public interest in any given topic fades.

    (Compare the city’s historic problems around preventing illegal de-stabilization of rental units, inability to prevent the NYPD from parking on sidewalks, and so forth.)

    by woodruffw
  • This will have no impact on Adobe's shenanigans. They offer click-to-cancel, but then charge a cancellation fee equal to what you would have paid for the rest of the one-year term. Their clever justification is that you received a significant discount for committing to a year, so you still owe them for the remaining months if you cancel early. I didn't even realize I had signed up for a one-year commitment. I'm not sure where they buried that clause.

    I expect more businesses will transition to this strategy to counter NYC's new rule. They won't necessarily lower the price, but you will have to sign up for a one-year term, then they will hit you with a massive cancellation fee if you "click to cancel".

    by flowerlad

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