I wonder if part of the solution here might be to put firm limits on the period over which subscriptions can auto-renew. That would limit the upside to these practices. Is there any real societal benefit to subscriptions lasting years without contact between the company and the user?

It should be simple to make it the law that people must affirmatively re-subscribe every 12 months, contracts saying otherwise are invalid, and charging someone for an expired subscription entitles them to twice the money back + $1000 (to make it worthwhile to fight illegal charges).