This is what legitimate government looks like. Leaders actually advocating for the people who are being deceived by those in power instead of helping those in power.
While this may be a trivial issue, being able to cancel a gym or newspaper subscription, it sends a signal. Companies need to view customers as partners in a business transaction and not objects to be exploited.
I am sympathetic to a perspective that says this is not the responsibility of a mayor of a single city... But also; who else is going to do it?
Normal people have very little say over the politicians that govern them in larger electoral regions like states or provinces, and maybe this can signal to other levels of government that they should implement similar rules... If it works.
Nintendo (subscription I have for my switch to access some older a classic games btw) is very good reminding me I have a subscription and whether I want to cancel (or renew). I don't have the email at hand but what I remember is thinking they really desire you to reflect to cancel (rather than a push to renew) if not wanting continued service. Sentiment of politeness and I find a good example what to do.
Also, not a subscription but seeing some dark practices after COVID onset at any fast-food like business (including cafes, juices, cupcakes, etc) where a preselected tip is selected. Default should be no.
> Subject: Information about Your Automatic Renewal
> This is an automatically generated email from Nintendo for customers who have a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack individual 12‑month (365‑day) membership set to renew automatically.
> Dear [user],
> Your Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack individual 12‑month (365‑day) membership will automatically renew soon.
> ...
> Deadline to turn off automatic renewal: [1 month from now]
It also does this right when you first sign up for automatic renewal except the deadline is [1 year from now].
I really appreciate companies that are transparent with renewals. I’m sure it cuts down on customer support load a lot too. Kagi goes as far as not billing you if you don’t use their service in the prior month. I was pretty shocked the first time I got that email. Made me a customer for life.
> where a preselected tip is selected. Default should be no.
A lot of this push to higher and higher and preselected tip options comes from POS software providers (Square et al) and credit card companies. They make money on transaction volume. Higher transaction -> more fees
The restaurants get to set those values though. A coffee shop near me puts the default options as $1, $2, $3 for low order totals. So if I go in and get a coffee (which is $4.50), the lowest tip option is 22% and the highest is a whopping 66%.
I've seriously gotten tip fatigue and have been working to move back to a sane standard. I've noticed the places that have these crazy tips, also pay their staff well.
I once wrote code that checks location before hiding/showing the cancel button. It’s really absurd that the nice experience exists on all subscription sites by now but you only get to see it if your state demands it.
I have no context of who you are/your position here, but the responses you're getting seem absurd to me.
I just don't understand people placing the blame on you when it should be on your company. Most people in the world are just trying to keep their job - you did it. It wasn't something illegal, it was something that if you didn't do, you would have risked your job and then someone else would have done it anyway.
Exactly. Those low quality comments are an example of the sad erosion of quality of comments on HN that I and others have complained about in recent times.
It's perfectly valid in our increasingly enshittified world to be angry with all those responsible for it. As much as you're right to point the finger a the C-suites, ultimately ALL of these user-hostile features, every single one, only exists because devs keep putting fingers to keyboards in exchange for checks.
Tech workers had a time where unionization and getting a voice in our companies was very much on the table, and the biggest voices among us shouted down the others in the name of rockstar salaries and free beer at the office. The "top contributors" at huge companies were scared shitless that they might have to accept a wage too much like the REST of their software engineer coworkers. The horror.
Same with websites like Airbnb. Last I checked, their search results only showed the 'real' prices (eg including fees) for certain states and countries. In some states you have to click into the listing before learning that there's an extra $500 cleaning fee on top of the nightly rate :)
I don’t like it either but blame goes to the top of the org chart. That’s not illegal or, by the standards of the field, flagrantly unethical so it’s a bit extreme to expect someone to resign over.
I think you, as the reader, are expected to mentally append “in NYC” when a link comes from nyc.gov. It seems very silly for a given municipality to need to qualify every sentence on its own website.
Again: this is NYC’s official website. It might (as a stretch) be a “lie by omission” on a national newspaper’s website, but this is a website that is solely dedicated to NYC itself.
Now I'm being super pedantic, but every town can't have the same "landmark" law. What makes a law a "landmark" is that other municipalities look to it for direction.
In a world where the California law exists, and the New York Times has been used as an example of the success of that law for years already, claiming some sort of moral victory with the "landmark" qualifier is objectively wrong.
Does any of this matter? No, but I like arguing about it.
If you want to be pedantic, NYC is a different “land” to have a “landmark” for :-)
(I like arguing too. Nothing wrong with that. I think in this case it suffices that they’re regulations in different states with relatively different political histories, even if the political valence of the two is somewhat similar. I would agree if this was a “landmark” change for Irvine, CA.)
The ironic thing to me is that Mamdani is only the mayor of NYC. He is not the governor of NY state. So if you live in Buffalo, you will still have to suffer through shenanigans?
Edit: I see others with similar thoughts from further down the scroll
It's just local NYC news. Thinks are landmark to them that are often commonplace elsewhere which makes sense since millions call that place home that are not acquainted with other places. It is truly America's one megacity so that sort of puffery is expected.
The advent of dumpsters was similarly hailed there, though almost no other cities in the US throw their trash on the sidewalk.
Generally when a seller in state X in the US sells to a buyer in a different state Y the consumer protection laws of state Y apply.
Even if the seller in X does not have a presence in Y, and so you might think Y has no jurisdiction, purposefully conducting business within a state is sufficient to allow Y to assert jurisdiction in regards to that business.
It's unclear whether this junk fee law will have teeth. In theory, California has the same anti-drip pricing law, but restaurants have a specific carve out [1] which is bullshit because the drip pricing that most people complain about is the X% "service charges" and "lifestyle fees" that restaurants have at the bottom of their menu in small print.
From what I can tell online, NYC rules won't have this carveout, but I haven't eaten there recently so I can't confirm.
Fees on one time services are not what this is targeting. This legislation is not meant to address that, and wouldn't apply to that.
They are going after recurring billing (that's what the headline means by "subscription"). It mentions things like gyms, online subscriptions etc.
It would be pretty wild if they had managed to get service fees at restaurants when they were not at all targeting service fees, restaurants or one time in person purchases.
> Rule from Mamdani administration ... targets ‘junk fees’
> The city is also targeting so-called “junk fees” that raise the final price of everything from apartments to sporting events, with a proposed rule that requires sellers to “advertise the total price for any good or service, including all mandatory additional charges and fees, up front”, according to a release shared with the Guardian.
> proposed rule that requires sellers to “advertise the total price for any good or service, including all mandatory additional charges and fees, up front”
This is going to be tough to enact, anywhere in the USA, even New York. There is nothing quite as American as "not knowing what you're going to pay for something until you have to pay." Whether it's your doctor bill, restaurant bill with tips and service fees, your hotel stay with a hidden resort fee, or just general purchases where tax is computed at the very end right before you pay... We are culturally so used to this abuse.
I mean culturally we're used to it, but it seems really easy to test for and therefore fine businesses doing it in NYC? Just go ring up some purchase and see if they add a tax onto the listed price, and if they do report it.
The latest one for me is renting a new apartment, getting told it cost $XXXX a month, then being told I'm required to have $XXXXXX amount of renter's insurance at $XXX a month and oh, by the way, click here to use ours.
The insurance requirement isn’t uncommon where I am (California). Though I would avoid whatever plan they are pushing. I got mine through my existing insurance provider and it worked out to ~$15 per month IIRC.
> which is bullshit because the drip pricing that most people complain about is the X% "service charges" and "lifestyle fees" that restaurants have at the bottom of their menu in small print.
I don't think I go to the same restaurants as everyone else.
I tried searching for what a "lifestyle fee" is and all I could find is references to "living wage fee" which is essentially a forced tip added to the bill.
A service charge for large groups though is understandable as they typically will require much more attention and work from waitstaff than the typical small dining party.
It's unfortunately somewhat common these days and personally I actively avoid any place which does this. At least it's only somewhat common rather than the standard so it's still possible. Couple of examples:
https://www.pacificcatch.com/menu/ "NorCal - A 3% surcharge (5% in San Francisco) will be added to all Guest checks to help offset the rising cost of wages and benefits. This is not gratuity."
Yea, it's basically restaurant owners trying to get their customers involved in their political whining.
Notice how you never see things like "Business License Fee" or "Restaurant Electricity Bill Surcharge" listed out as separate line items on customers' bills. Those are things restaurant owners have to pay, too, so why don't they get their own charges to customers? Why does only "Living Wage" get a line item on the customer's bill?
"Fuel surcharge" on flights. Which should be illegal: the cost of hedging fuel cost risk should be included in any ticket price.
A friend said that Uber was charging a fuel surcharge here in New Zealand, but that it wasn't passed on to the driver (who pays for the fuel). If true I would find that interesting.
> A friend said that Uber was charging a fuel surcharge here in New Zealand, but that it wasn't passed on to the driver
I did a bit of a dive on this and I think it’s not correct.
I have a low threshold for hating them, after the reports of how females staffers were treated a few years back, but this new thing seems to be untrue.
Hey now, let's not get carried away, these jackass restaurant owners want to make it clear, the "Living Wage" guilt trip is the tip part, and the fees THEY put on are to pay for "benefits like healthcare" and you're not allowed to consider it part of the tip.
Nevermind that California doesn't even have a lower "tipped" min wage like some states do, so by supporting tipping, we're just saying that servers simply "deserve" more money for some reason than people who stock shelves or pick orders at Amazon or Walmart.
I wonder if the bit about 'junk fees' will include undisclosed hotel fees. I just stayed there last week in a no-frills "hotel" which doesn't include daily room cleaning, has no staff at night, and has no amenities whatsoever, and they charged me a surprise-at-check-in $35 a night resort fee. This fee was not described in the booking.
That hotel may have broken an FTC rule that's been in effect for about a year now.
> Effective May 12, 2025, the FTC’s Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 C.F.R. Part 464, prohibits bait-and-switch pricing and other tactics used to obscure and misrepresent total prices and fees for live-event tickets and short-term lodging.
I just got a notice from my credit card company that Evernote just charged my credit card after 2 'successful' cancellations of my subscription each of the last 2 years, and the complete deletion of my account several months ago.
Hopefully these will become more widespread - I'm not in NY or CA.
yes, that is happening to me real-time, the article in the Economist reminded me (https://www.economist.com/business/2026/07/01/can-bending-sp...), right down to Evernote being the one they are attempting to gouge me on at best and charge illegally at worst. so i had a closer look at bank and PayPal GLs
i found similar issues with Paddle (attempted to quit), Proton (double charged), Splashtop (attempted to quit), and Bloomberg via Apple (attempted to quit) and the common thread is PayPal. never Stripe.
my PayPal account is ancient (2002) and knowing what i know about payments (perhaps a little) i believe there is something akin to a hole regarding legacy pre-auth tokens in a PayPal architecture which is old enough to run for the US House. at least Bending Spoons would be willfully exploiting such a hole, because after i refunded / cancelled, 9 days later they were able to charge again. PayPal also seems to have an open marriage with PCI-DSS / SOC2
There’s a reason they were used as a poster child of a bad actor when the FTC rule was made a few years ago, before the current administration shredded it.
For what it's worth, I just tried cancelling my NYTimes subscription to see if it was still as bad as I'd remembered, and aside from desperately begging me not to leave, it was quite simple. No need to contact support. I wasn't planning to go through with it, but I still got a nice discount for the next year, so.. thanks!
This is where getting it via Apple’s App Store is nice for consumers.
I (a non-American) had a NYT subscription through the iOS app some years back and cancelling it (like any other subscription through the App Store) was as as simple as:
- Open Settings
- Tap my account
- Tap Subscriptions
- Tap the New York Times option (or whatever it’s called)
- Tap Cancel
While the gate keeper aspect of Apple may not be good in many ways, at least we get this kind of benefit from it.
As someone who doesn’t live in the US, it was hilariously impossible: you had to call on the phone a number in New York, which never picked up, so you had to pay hours of internal call, or send a fax, something I hadn’t done in two decades…
Thankfully, I had a bank that used technology from this century, including a disposable credit card number. I stopped paying and that lead them to them calling me.
Is this something that cities can really enforce? Like I get that NYC is a bit of an exception but let's say a 5 person town in Wyoming decides that they want to make this practice illegal and they all vote to do so. It's not clear to me that would mean anything at all.
NYC has ~2% of the US population, and it’s a relatively wealthy slice compared to the mean. NYC has roughly 13x as many people as the entire state of Wyoming. I could see a company writing off Wyoming entirely (not likely, but possible) but not NYC.
States like CA, FL, NY, and TX can pass state laws that create defacto national regulations through sheer size, but smaller than that and you’ll have trouble.
Sure but say some company based in Lousiana has a website that violates NYC law.
What exactly will NYC do about it? Is there some mechanism to for them to block the website inside of NYC? The company would presumably have no property they could seize or employees they could imprison.
I suppose right now there is no federal preemption - but I fully expect gym & similar lobbying at the federal level to get a rule in place to allow preemption challenges.
The irony with all this, is if a company makes it difficult to cancel their subscription, it's probably not a good product. Antidotically, I've found that making it easy for users to not only cancel, but refund, has given me eye opening things to fix in some products that made it so less people cancelled or refunded. So I try to always err on best user experience.
NYT made it difficult, and they are a pretty good product. If you didn't live in california and wanted to cancel your subscription, you were required to talk to a service rep who would try to get you stay by giving you some free period before normal subscription billing resumed
Maybe it should be required to review quality laws in other countries in general. One advantage is that you don't have to pretend or imagine what will happen if it's been tested in the wild.
This is really a banking / credit card thing. CC suppliers put a lot of effort into packaging recurring subscriptions for their businesses because … people forget to cancel. So the real leverage here is not go to each individual website to one click cancel, but just cancel the direct debit / subscription from in your banking or credit card app.
> When the Biden administration introduced a junk fee rule in 2024, the US Chamber of Commerce argued it was “an attempt to micromanage businesses’ pricing structures”, and apartment fees were cut from that federal rule after lobbying by the real-estate industry.
This drives me nuts to read, because it’s usually the same pattern.
Rule -> lobbyists descend -> politicians cave -> carve out that takes away the whole point of the rule -> everyone declares victory
I don't expect that Mamdani will cave in to real estate lobbyists lol. What you're describing is exactly why Establishment Democrats are losing to Mamdani and his ilk (DSA)
The "and" is very important here. Places like Seattle now mandate servers get a real wage. It inexplicably hasn't changed tip culture at all, so now they get regular wages and still complain when someone doesn't tip 20%+ for a takeout order.
Seattle and its surrounding cities have among the highest minimum wages in the entire world (~$22/hour). You're maybe not renting a studio apartment by yourself but it is far from destitution.
Is there something about serving people food that means you should get a tax break? Or is that just a holdover of cash tipping to kindly get servers to actually declare the full value if their tips as wages instead of just saying they magically weren't tipped all year
Why should it be mentioned? The article doesn't call out any other specific company by name. Is the Times really that egregious of a offender compared to the other businesses? Does new york city have a history of selectively enforcing laws to favor local businesses?
New York Times is one of the worst and most famous offenders of making it hard to cancel your subscription. There are companies that make it as hard or spammy but few with the reach of the NYT
If anything, based on Louis Rossman’s experiences it’s quite the opposite - petty bureaucrats do their damndest to ensure it’s as difficult as possible to run a business in New York.
NYT is the biggest brand that I know of that pulls these "easy to subscribe, hard to unsubscribe" antics. Especially galling because if you live in california, you can cancel with just a click, so obviously it is possible, but if you live in 49 other states you are forced to listen to a sales pitch from a human before being allowed to unsubscribe
A big one I’ve been seeing a lot lately is advertising annual subscriptions as monthly rates. It isn’t $12/month subscription if I have to pay $120 in a lump sum up front. The actual monthly rate is often basically double what they’re advertising.
Hasn’t Sadiq Khan been a similar story, from a Muslim immigrant family turned popular mayor of the nation’s largest city? Though from what I understand he’s from the more business-oriented center-left, in contrast with Mamdani.
Another one that belongs on this list: AI-generated photos in housing listings. You can no longer tell what the property actually looks like, and the images conveniently erase the problem spots you'd only catch in person. False advertising is getting completely out of hand.
It's crazy that people think they should get away with these. I've seen some examples where basic things like the number of windows or where the garage and driveway are was totally misrepresented - surely they'd at least look at the results?
I agree, but how does one begin to enforce a ban like this? Bait-and-switch has always existed in real estate, which is all the more reason to do full due-diligence and inspect the property thoroughly and not just put in an offer sight unseen. If a seller is using AI to that extent, I'd be worried about what else they're hiding about the property.
>I agree, but how does one begin to enforce a ban like this?
Look to something that works to modify behavior: credit reports. Make it easy to report an actor for malfeasance, assume they are guilty until proven innocent, and force them to defend themselves to the agency. Since we invent these tools for evil, we may as well use them for good.
Queenslander here and not a term I've noticed myself, bar one commercial on tv that used an animated meerkat, other than that not a big consumer of buying much or booking things online, though I'd understand if I saw it tagged to something where one time pricing event might sprawl ... subscription stuff, nah not happening.
I'm building a SaaS right now and made the "non-deceptive" choices this law wants: cancellation is one click from settings, no retention maze, no surprise renewal, 30-day money-back. What surprised me is how much the tooling assumes you want the dark patterns. Billing platforms ship "cancellation flow" templates that are really retention funnels — discount offer, pause offer, survey, guilt screen, then maybe the button. The default path is the deceptive path; you have to actively rip stuff out to be straightforward.
Which I think explains why this needs regulation at all. Every individual dark pattern is locally rational — it demonstrably improves net retention, so any PM optimizing a dashboard will keep it. The cost (people who feel trapped and tell everyone) never shows up in the same spreadsheet. Markets are bad at pricing "customers who quietly hate you."
The one-click-cancel requirement is the part with real teeth. Junk-fee rules die by carve-out (see California's restaurant exemption), but "cancel must be as easy as signup" is binary enough to actually enforce.
While this may be a trivial issue, being able to cancel a gym or newspaper subscription, it sends a signal. Companies need to view customers as partners in a business transaction and not objects to be exploited.
I am sympathetic to a perspective that says this is not the responsibility of a mayor of a single city... But also; who else is going to do it?
Normal people have very little say over the politicians that govern them in larger electoral regions like states or provinces, and maybe this can signal to other levels of government that they should implement similar rules... If it works.
Who is deceiving who now? And I'm not sure who is in power here...
Also, not a subscription but seeing some dark practices after COVID onset at any fast-food like business (including cafes, juices, cupcakes, etc) where a preselected tip is selected. Default should be no.
> Subject: Information about Your Automatic Renewal
> This is an automatically generated email from Nintendo for customers who have a Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack individual 12‑month (365‑day) membership set to renew automatically.
> Dear [user],
> Your Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack individual 12‑month (365‑day) membership will automatically renew soon.
> ...
> Deadline to turn off automatic renewal: [1 month from now]
It also does this right when you first sign up for automatic renewal except the deadline is [1 year from now].
Why would EU rules apply?
Nintendo is just a decent company compared to most others.
They don't like disputes so it's preemptive.
A lot of this push to higher and higher and preselected tip options comes from POS software providers (Square et al) and credit card companies. They make money on transaction volume. Higher transaction -> more fees
I've seriously gotten tip fatigue and have been working to move back to a sane standard. I've noticed the places that have these crazy tips, also pay their staff well.
Ironically that has meant it’s hard to unsubscribe from the New York Times except in California.
I just don't understand people placing the blame on you when it should be on your company. Most people in the world are just trying to keep their job - you did it. It wasn't something illegal, it was something that if you didn't do, you would have risked your job and then someone else would have done it anyway.
Tech workers had a time where unionization and getting a voice in our companies was very much on the table, and the biggest voices among us shouted down the others in the name of rockstar salaries and free beer at the office. The "top contributors" at huge companies were scared shitless that they might have to accept a wage too much like the REST of their software engineer coworkers. The horror.
Genuine question. Not sure how I'd feel.
That is why regulation is so important.
I think it's silly for a municipality to lie (by omission?) in their own press announcements.
Again: this is NYC’s official website. It might (as a stretch) be a “lie by omission” on a national newspaper’s website, but this is a website that is solely dedicated to NYC itself.
In a world where the California law exists, and the New York Times has been used as an example of the success of that law for years already, claiming some sort of moral victory with the "landmark" qualifier is objectively wrong.
Does any of this matter? No, but I like arguing about it.
(I like arguing too. Nothing wrong with that. I think in this case it suffices that they’re regulations in different states with relatively different political histories, even if the political valence of the two is somewhat similar. I would agree if this was a “landmark” change for Irvine, CA.)
California still S-tier for protecting its land and people.
Edit: I see others with similar thoughts from further down the scroll
The advent of dumpsters was similarly hailed there, though almost no other cities in the US throw their trash on the sidewalk.
Even if the seller in X does not have a presence in Y, and so you might think Y has no jurisdiction, purposefully conducting business within a state is sufficient to allow Y to assert jurisdiction in regards to that business.
I've found the person who lives in California lol, no it does not work that way.
They didn't here because for them as representatives of NYC that's all they are speaking to.
Technical pedantry like this just displays poor language and social skills.
From what I can tell online, NYC rules won't have this carveout, but I haven't eaten there recently so I can't confirm.
[1] https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
They are going after recurring billing (that's what the headline means by "subscription"). It mentions things like gyms, online subscriptions etc.
It would be pretty wild if they had managed to get service fees at restaurants when they were not at all targeting service fees, restaurants or one time in person purchases.
This is going to be tough to enact, anywhere in the USA, even New York. There is nothing quite as American as "not knowing what you're going to pay for something until you have to pay." Whether it's your doctor bill, restaurant bill with tips and service fees, your hotel stay with a hidden resort fee, or just general purchases where tax is computed at the very end right before you pay... We are culturally so used to this abuse.
I don't think I go to the same restaurants as everyone else.
A service charge for large groups though is understandable as they typically will require much more attention and work from waitstaff than the typical small dining party.
https://sushiconfidential.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/sc_... "3.5% Living Wage Surcharge added to each bill which allows us to provide the service you have always enjoyed!"
https://www.pacificcatch.com/menu/ "NorCal - A 3% surcharge (5% in San Francisco) will be added to all Guest checks to help offset the rising cost of wages and benefits. This is not gratuity."
Notice how you never see things like "Business License Fee" or "Restaurant Electricity Bill Surcharge" listed out as separate line items on customers' bills. Those are things restaurant owners have to pay, too, so why don't they get their own charges to customers? Why does only "Living Wage" get a line item on the customer's bill?
"Fuel surcharge" on flights. Which should be illegal: the cost of hedging fuel cost risk should be included in any ticket price.
A friend said that Uber was charging a fuel surcharge here in New Zealand, but that it wasn't passed on to the driver (who pays for the fuel). If true I would find that interesting.
I did a bit of a dive on this and I think it’s not correct. I have a low threshold for hating them, after the reports of how females staffers were treated a few years back, but this new thing seems to be untrue.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/128042303/uber-introduces-f...
Nevermind that California doesn't even have a lower "tipped" min wage like some states do, so by supporting tipping, we're just saying that servers simply "deserve" more money for some reason than people who stock shelves or pick orders at Amazon or Walmart.
Although I will admit service is notoriously bad over here but in honesty that's secretly how we all want it.
I run Union electrical jobs and I don’t list out every fringe benefit they receive on an itemized invoice. It’s $163/hr with everything baked in.
If restaurants want to pay a living wage, charge more money for food.
> Effective May 12, 2025, the FTC’s Rule on Unfair or Deceptive Fees, 16 C.F.R. Part 464, prohibits bait-and-switch pricing and other tactics used to obscure and misrepresent total prices and fees for live-event tickets and short-term lodging.
https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/rule-unfair-...
I just got a notice from my credit card company that Evernote just charged my credit card after 2 'successful' cancellations of my subscription each of the last 2 years, and the complete deletion of my account several months ago.
Hopefully these will become more widespread - I'm not in NY or CA.
"What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48799966
i found similar issues with Paddle (attempted to quit), Proton (double charged), Splashtop (attempted to quit), and Bloomberg via Apple (attempted to quit) and the common thread is PayPal. never Stripe.
my PayPal account is ancient (2002) and knowing what i know about payments (perhaps a little) i believe there is something akin to a hole regarding legacy pre-auth tokens in a PayPal architecture which is old enough to run for the US House. at least Bending Spoons would be willfully exploiting such a hole, because after i refunded / cancelled, 9 days later they were able to charge again. PayPal also seems to have an open marriage with PCI-DSS / SOC2
Cancelling then being charged anyway is something else. Something akin to being robbed IMHO.
I (a non-American) had a NYT subscription through the iOS app some years back and cancelling it (like any other subscription through the App Store) was as as simple as:
- Open Settings
- Tap my account
- Tap Subscriptions
- Tap the New York Times option (or whatever it’s called)
- Tap Cancel
While the gate keeper aspect of Apple may not be good in many ways, at least we get this kind of benefit from it.
Thankfully, I had a bank that used technology from this century, including a disposable credit card number. I stopped paying and that lead them to them calling me.
Edit: but also, who cares? Literally no solution to anything on earth works for EVERYONE
States like CA, FL, NY, and TX can pass state laws that create defacto national regulations through sheer size, but smaller than that and you’ll have trouble.
What exactly will NYC do about it? Is there some mechanism to for them to block the website inside of NYC? The company would presumably have no property they could seize or employees they could imprison.
https://www.al.com/news/2026/07/att-customers-your-cell-phon...
However, in this case it’s because NYC law is typically allowed under NY state law to be stronger (but not weaker) than any corresponding state law.
how: by declaring it a law in that area
Course, one should never underestimate the value of a benevolent dictator...
Anecdotally
This drives me nuts to read, because it’s usually the same pattern.
Rule -> lobbyists descend -> politicians cave -> carve out that takes away the whole point of the rule -> everyone declares victory
*Direct click-to-cancel with subscription receipt.
[1] https://collegeplaceapartments.managebuilding.com/Resident/p...
Sounds like they are giving you two months free if you pay with a lump sum in advance.
Look to something that works to modify behavior: credit reports. Make it easy to report an actor for malfeasance, assume they are guilty until proven innocent, and force them to defend themselves to the agency. Since we invent these tools for evil, we may as well use them for good.
"7 dollars sorted." for example.
I still don't know why Apple, oft parading as the people's champion, automatically converts trials to subscriptions.
So many scummy apps exploit this by offering a 1 week trial and saying like "only $4/month!" but charging a 1 year's sub after the trial period ends.
Which I think explains why this needs regulation at all. Every individual dark pattern is locally rational — it demonstrably improves net retention, so any PM optimizing a dashboard will keep it. The cost (people who feel trapped and tell everyone) never shows up in the same spreadsheet. Markets are bad at pricing "customers who quietly hate you."
The one-click-cancel requirement is the part with real teeth. Junk-fee rules die by carve-out (see California's restaurant exemption), but "cancel must be as easy as signup" is binary enough to actually enforce.