To avoid the overhead, we could simply adopt pro-consumer practices across the board? Easier than segmenting users and deciding which cancellation mechanisms are available to them based on region.

Nothing from stopping them from making it this easy to cancel for everyone. We all see cookie banners due to the EU's rules.

Alternatively, let people cancel easily everywhere. If you think it’s worth the extra revenue to geofence easy cancellations, then—well, you do you, but you are making a business judgment that the additional development cost is justified. This is different from VAT/sales tax etc., where it is in fact impossible to comply everywhere without discriminating by jurisdiction.

As far as added complexity goes, a rule for a city the size of NYC doesn’t seem like that far of a bridge to cross.

It’s an easy rule to comply with and nothing stops you from complying with it everywhere.

We will see a patchwork regime, where companies make it easy to cancel if you’re in NYC or another jurisdiction with similar rules, but difficult otherwise. When you see this, you must remember that the easiest thing would have been to make it easy for everyone to cancel regardless of location. That would be perfectly legal and it would be the cheapest option to build. If a company didn’t do that it’s because they made a deliberate choice to spend more money just so they could continue screwing some people over.

its hard being a dick

> While I think this is a good idea, we already have so many different regions to comply with, now we're adding cities....

Lina Khan's FTC passed a rule to make click-to-cancel nationwide in 2024.

It was killed on procedural grounds by the highly conservative Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The take-away from how it was killed boils down to "we (companies) know that we'd lose more than $100 million dollars if people could reasonably unsubscribe rather than deal with our dark patterns".

The old FTC would have been able to fix the procedural problem, but then Trump took office and gutted the FTC and destroyed all the good work it was doing.

Since the federal government is failing us, I support local governments doing the right thing. If enough do, companies will eventually be forced into compliance nationally because it won't be worth the complexity to have hundreds of regional carve-outs.

just remember, any amount of churn rate reduction your dark patterns earn you will be paid for many times over in the afterlife

You can't seriously think this makes you sound like a sympathetic party, right? "Oh no, we have to maintain two codepaths now: the pro-social one for places with functional governments, and the slimy anti-consumer fuck-you one for everywhere else. Won't anyone think of our plight?"

cvs.com doesn't allow me to delete my account unless I provide an address in certain states.

So I provided a fake address in California, and it was done.

Unfortunately that's how things work these days sometimes.