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Comment by TulliusCicero | Hacker News Reader

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TulliusCicero·

> Some of them will make you literally call them up to cancel.

This should be illegal. If you can easily sign up online, it should be possible to cancel online just as easily.

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It is, if you're in California. It's the law.

It’s also possible to… “move” to California for long enough that a “Cancel” button magically appears in your account setting a page. This was true for WSJ who otherwise wanted a phone call with hold times.

Well, good. Should be illegal basically everywhere, though.

But consumer protections are for "liberal nanny states" that "no one wants to live in".

It's the problem of a two-party system. Apparently wanting easy online cancellation means you need to support an entire debt-ridden, tax-heavy, welfare state that encourages high crime rates, violent criminal releases, and penalizes self-defense.

Well, there's a mechanism for that. I believe other states' residents don't care as much about these things, though. For instance, the amount of work required to make this law in North Dakota is pretty low, but I don't think it's going to happen.

I think it should just be a federal law enforced by the CFPB. The level of obviousness, in terms of consumer protection, is very high here.

Republicans strongly oppose the CFPB:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Financial_Protectio...

Maybe the FTC? CFPB is solely concerned with financial institutions. They're not going to care too much about newspaper subscriptions.

Ah okay, I thought that they enforced consumer finance stuff more broadly.

It won't happen, because it would extract less profit for shareholders.

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