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Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

I'd be willing to say that subscriptions are a dark pattern when they don't automatically stop if you stop using them.

A fundamental part of healthy business relationships is value for value. E.g., you give me money, I give you a sandwich, you take the sandwich, eat it, and are happy with it. If you keep paying me for sandwiches but I don't give them to you, that's not healthy. Ditto if I put them on the counter but you stop taking them.

Personally, I think there should be a law that all service/software subscriptions auto-suspend after 30 days of non-use. Because right now there's a big incentive for businesses to get you to sign up for things they think you're not going to use, and to keep on charging you even though they know you're not using it.

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What you're asking for is a la carte access while still getting discounted subscription pricing, pushing all the risk onto the business. Consume as much as you want, but pay nothing when you don't. Sounds like a crap deal for the business.

And what businesses are hoping for are users that are paying without actually using their service. Produce nothing, but get paid every month. Sounds like a crap deal for the users.

> And what businesses are hoping for are users that are paying without actually using their service

All of them, from the local gym to Dropbox to Spotify. Subscription businesses can't make money if every consumer costs more to service than the revenue they generate. There's even an official accounting term for it, breakage.

> Produce nothing, but get paid every month

Failure to consume and get value from a subscription is your fault, not the business that fulfilled its obligation.

I am amazed that you can't see that approach as exploitative, and that your last line is victim blaming.

If a company can't exist without tricking people into paying for something they get no value out of, maybe it shouldn't exist.

> can't see that approach as exploitative

You're getting all-you-can-eat from the business for a fixed price in exchange for predictable revenue as opposed to pay-as-you-go. That you think that's exploitative just tells me you don't understand the business model. You want to have your cake and eat it, too.

Ah yes, the old "people who disagree with me must be ignorant" routine. Not a good sign, but I'll take one more swing at it.

An all-you-can-eat restaurant where customers don't eat anything and you still keep charging them until they notice months or years later is indeed exploitative.

For something like an apartment, there's reasonable justification for long-term contracts and continuing to charge people without regard to use, in that it's an expensive good that has exactly one user at a time and where it can take a while to find a new tenant.

But that entirely vanishes with most internet-based subscriptions. If I stop watching Netflix, they stop experiencing marginal costs for me. If I get excited about a NYT subscription but then stop reading, it's the same deal. Nobody went out and bought another server just because I signed up. I could cancel at any time and they'd have to let me go. If they keep charging me when I'm not getting any value, then it's not a mutually beneficial relationship; they're just exploiting me. And indeed, maybe they were exploiting me from the get-go if their intent was to just get my money in without regard for whether I was going to get anything out of it.

People who take money without providing value are at best economic parasites, but quite a lot of them are just scammers, grifters, and frauds. Which is exactly why a law would be especially valuable here, so that their time and attention were devoted to some socially positive activity.

If you eat a buffet and only have one plate, you don't get to complain and ask for a refund.

> keep charging them until they notice months or years later is indeed exploitative.

When is it the customer's fault for not cancelling? You're working very hard to avoid responsibility for the business contract you entered into.

> they stop experiencing marginal costs for me.

Which are a small part of the overall cost structure. So what?

> Nobody went out and bought another server just because I signed up

Absolutely they do. The business is managing its finances under the assumption of subscribers and LTV, and making investments accordingly based on those assumptions and forecasts.

> they're just exploiting me

For charging you for something you signed up for but were too lazy to manage properly?

> just get my money in without regard for whether I was going to get anything out of it

There you go passing the buck again. It's your responsibility to use the thing you signed up for.

> People who take money without providing value are at best economic parasites

You mean the money you're giving them as part of consensual business agreement?

You are an excellent example of how people who are abusive have consistent worldviews that justify the abuse. You are placing 100% of the responsibility on the weaker party in the contract, and 0% on the people who designed the contract plus everything that leads up to and comes after the contract. At the same time you clearly understand the human cognitive limitations that make people susceptible to carefully-designed exploitations, you act as if the people who design the scams are not just innocent but justified in taking advantage because money.

And with that, I'm done. You are very dedicated to both exploitation and victim-blaming as justification. I'm not going to convince you otherwise, presumably because you made or make your living from that. “It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it," said Upton Sinclair, and I have better things to do with my time.

>People who take money without providing value are at best economic parasites, but quite a lot of them are just scammers, grifters, and frauds. Which is exactly why a law would be especially valuable here, so that their time and attention were devoted to some socially positive activity.

Does that also apply to your car/home/health insurance as well?

If you don't have an accident/get robbed/go to the doctor, are you being exploited by the insurance company?

Edit: BTW, I'm an old guy myself.

It of course does not apply, because you're getting risk-mitigation value every month. (If you don't think so, feel free to drop the insurance.)

That said, those are prime opportunities for parasitism and exploitation, because it's hard to measure risk reduction until actual harm comes along. That's why those sectors need heavy regulation.

And so how does that not apply to Netflix or The New York Times?

You said[0]:

"But that entirely vanishes with most internet-based subscriptions. If I stop watching Netflix, they stop experiencing marginal costs for me. If I get excited about a NYT subscription but then stop reading, it's the same deal. Nobody went out and bought another server just because I signed up. I could cancel at any time and they'd have to let me go. If they keep charging me when I'm not getting any value, then it's not a mutually beneficial relationship; they're just exploiting me. And indeed, maybe they were exploiting me from the get-go if their intent was to just get my money in without regard for whether I was going to get anything out of it."

A subscription with them provides access to the services they sell all the time as long as your subscription is current, in exactly the same way as as insurance provides risk mitigation.

You appear to be arguing that it's the subscription model that's the problem and not those who use it in an exploitative manner.

I'm not a fan of subscription models myself, which can be used in exploitative ways, but the fault isn't in the model, but in those who implement/administer it.

N.B.: I do have insurance, but not Netflix or NYT subscriptions.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31818397

Edit: Fixed formatting, typo.

Your theory is that Netflix isn't selling entertainment, they're selling boredom insurance? That somebody might have a sudden, unexpected, and catastrophic need for sitcom reruns that might cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars, so to mitigate that risk they pay Netflix just in case?

If you really can't tell those classes of product apart, I don't think I can help you.

>Your theory is that Netflix isn't selling entertainment, they're selling boredom insurance? That somebody might have a sudden, unexpected, and catastrophic need for sitcom reruns that might cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars, so to mitigate that risk they pay Netflix just in case?

Don't put words in my mouth. I never said anything even approaching that.

Netflix sells a service (a pretty useless one, in my view) -- video content -- for which they charge a monthly fee.

Insurance companies sell a service (more useful, in my view) -- covering (or at least reducing) the costs of bad stuff happening -- for which they charge a monthly fee.

One is (at least in my view) more useful than the other, but the business model is the same -- pay a monthly fee for some product/service.

As I said, it's not the model that's the problem, it's those who use it in an exploitative fashion.

Please do go ahead and set up another straw man you can knock down for your own satisfaction, but I won't participate further.

Have a great day!

The business models are not the same. Insurance is deeply different in an economic sense than selling videos. Willfully ignoring that distinction is ridiculous, and I tried to make the difference apparent in the comment you're quoting. If you're not getting it, that's fine, you are free to carry on not getting it.

While the business models are different (obviously), the payment model is the same.

I was inexact (business vs. payment model) in my previous comment. My apologies.

But my point still stands: Subscription payment models aren't inherently exploitative; rather they can be implemented/administered (or not) in an exploitative fashion.

Don't like Netflix/NYT and others' implementation of said payment model? I'm not surprised. I'm not very high on them either.

But just because you don't like the specific implementation, doesn't make them a different payment model. That payment model being: "pay a monthly fee, get whatever product/service you've paid (and continue to pay) for.

You appear to be claiming that because different companies sell different stuff, that the payment models are not the same.

Which is akin to arguing that since automobiles with ICEs[0] serve a different purpose than automobiles with electric engines. They don't.

And likewise, subscription payment models are subscription payment models, regardless of the product/service being offered.

>If you're not getting it, that's fine, you are free to carry on not getting it.

And you're free to continue making wildly inaccurate statements. Have fun and a good day!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine

> If a company can't exist without tricking people into paying for something they get no value out of, maybe it shouldn't exist.

Sure, but this doesn't describe all subscription businesses, plenty of companies have healthy margins even with active users.

No one is saying there aren't subscription businesses that abuse subscription pricing to get recurring revenue from what should be one-time revenue, leave customers locked into something they're not getting value out of, etc. but that's not a truism of subscriptions (even the traditionally shady ones like gyms!)

Sure, and nowhere did I say I wanted to ban subscriptions, leases, and the like. I'm just saying that for online subscriptions, society should reduce the incentives to exploit people by requiring subscriptions to auto-suspend when they're not actually used.

"Failure to consume and get value from a subscription is your fault, not the business that fulfilled its obligation."

On some level yes. But recently banks here in Australia were busted for charging dead people.

https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/apra-punish...

Are you going to tell me the dead people are at fault for not taking advantage of services provided?

The point here is the relationship between (business) provider and consumer. It should be fair and balanced. No one is asking a business to provide services for nothing. But when the services aren't being used, the non-consumer shouldn't be charged either.

The only question remaining is - what is a fair way to go about this?

A reasonable time period of non-use before suspension of service seems ok. The business got money for nothing - but can't try to make that into a business plan.

Clearly businesses would rather have more "money for nothing" - so would everyone - but it isn't reasonable.

For sure!

I also think there are systemic reasons to stop it. If you're running, say, a good streaming service, imagine a competitor coming along that makes a lot of use of dark patterns to get people to sign up and keep paying even though the value is much lower than your service. Now you have a choice: try to compete against a better-funded competitor or go for the same dirty money yourself?

As a society, we want companies to devote their capital and brainpower to making things better for customers that can freely choose the best products. And that's what most company founders want too, so that markets are competitive in fair ways and they can focus on the products that got them excited enough to start a company. So I think it's in the interests of everybody except the parasitically inclined to just rule out exploitative business models.

For anybody who offers a month-to-month subscription, I'm not asking for anything other than them not taking money they're not earning. You have a point with, say, annual subscriptions. But for services where there's no cost to the vendor for an unused subscription, maybe that's ok, as there an annual subscription could much more easily be a dark pattern.

I also think pushing the risk of "the customer doesn't actually get anything out of it" onto the business is where the risk should be. Who better to understand and manage that risk than the people making the product and who have great masses of data on how it actually gets used?

Absolutely there's cost to the business even if you don't use the service. There's marketing, salary, healthcare, leases, and any other number of expenses. Gym's pay rent regardless of you showing up. Netflix still has pay for content you don't watch.

The entire point of a subscription model is that a business can offer a steeply discounted price vs. pay-as-you-go in exchange for predictable, recurring revenue. That's the only way the model works.

> Gym's pay rent regardless of you showing up.

In my opinion, that's the industry (at least here in .au) that are the poster-child worst example of dark patterns in manipulative subscription charging.

They are infamous here for doing fucked up things in an attempt to make it as difficult as possible to cancel your subscription. I had one friend who moved overseas, discovered his gym was still billing him monthly even though he'd emailed to cancel explaining they didn't have any locations in his new country of residence, and they tried to claim the only way to cancel his subscription was in-person at the location he signed up at. He had to lawyer up when he cancelled the credit card (and told them he'd done so), and they threatened to send his account to a collection agency. (On single lawyer letter got him a refund of all charges since the date of his original email saying he was cancelling, so they _knew_ they were legally in the wrong and wouldn't have a leg to stand on it of ever got to court.)

That's a really good example of the sort of exploitative thinking I'm talking about. They clearly knew what they were doing. As do all the companies who let you sign up easily, but where cancellation requires filing a form "in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'" and then spending 30 minutes on the phone with an obtuse and obstreperous call center rep.

And it's all just such a waste for everybody. The first gym I joined was run by a very dedicated muscle-head who was at his gym a fair bit. You signed up for a fixed period, like a week or a month or a quarter. At the end of the period, you could renew if you wanted. And if you weren't coming to the gym often enough, he'd ask why you weren't coming. He believed in his product and wanted people to be successful at his gym.

But I'd guess part of the reason that doesn't dominate is that awful gym companies sucker people in, do everything they can to become credit card parasites, and then spend a lot of the extra money on marketing and on giving people good-looking deals that they know they won't use.

Sorry, I thought you'd understand I was talking about marginal cost. Yes, I understand that software companies have non-marginal expenses. And yes, gyms pay rent, but I clearly said I was talking about "service/software subscriptions".

I also disagree that's the point of subscription models. If I'm on a month-to-month subscription, there's no legal guarantee the revenue is predictable more than 30 days out. That would be just as true if auto-suspend were required for non-use.

> I understand that software companies have non-marginal expenses.

For most subscription businesses and SaaS companies, non-marginal costs are most of the costs. The pennies Netflix saves if you don't stream during the month are a pittance compared to other SG&A expenses like headcount and content production.

> I also disagree that's the point of subscription models.

What do you think the point is? Why would Jetbrain's move to a subscription model? Why does Spotify stream music and not sell tracks and albums? A subscription model is a fundamentally different business than one offering standard transactional sales.

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