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Comment by Popeyes | Hacker News Reader

If it's going to cost the industry more than $100m then it's going to cost consumers more than $100m. What a scam.

This assumes costs are zero-sum when in reality the current system already imposes significant hidden costs on consumers through wasted time, accidental continued subscriptions, and frustration.

Since GP said “more than”, I don’t think they are assuming the absence of hidden costs.

I'm absolutely in favor of the rule, but this is simply not true. Mandating everyone to implement changes in how their software works will incur huge costs, no matter what the change is, even if there were zero benefit or savings for anyone.

> Mandating everyone to implement changes in how their software works will incur huge costs

I'm sorry but if the companies bottom line depends on forgotten subscriptions you dont get to cry foul when your dark practices need to be removed.

This has nothing to do with forgotten subscriptions or dark practices.

Nearly any mandated changes to nearly any company's software no matter what business they are in will incur costs. The FTC is required to take extra care when regulating in the case when those costs will be high.

I’d argue that it costs more to implement and maintain dark patterns in the software than to do happy paths. It also costs customers time and money to jump through hoops to end service you don’t want and need.

In MAGA terms - if your business cannot survive in free market competition without scam schemes - it’s “unamerican” and shouldn’t be a business.

>I’d argue that it costs more to implement and maintain dark patterns in the software than to do happy paths.

I would agree with this argument. After all, you have to staff the customer service phone lines now to cancel service. It follows that presumably customer service's capacity to retain customers/revenue is profitable after factoring in costs for their wages and overhead. Dark patterns may cost money vs light patterns, but they also may have more net profit.

mandating changes for power generation to stop polluting as much, for car manufacturers to make safer cars, for chemical plants to stop dumping toxic waste in water supplies all also cost a lot, but we make them do it anyway

They absolutely do not need 23 hours of lawyers + programmers + designers + etc to comply with the law.

There are numerous states with an existing "click to cancel" regulation. If you're compliant with those states then that implementation was federally compliant as well.

The only huge cost is a drop in revenue not an increase in cost.

Question is, what is a preliminary regulatory analysis and how much of a hurdle would that have been.

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