For me: Cancelling paid subscriptions should be as easy as subscribing. I hate the fact that they actively hide the unsubscribe option or that you sometimes should have to write an e-mail if you want to unsubscribe.
Advertising. At what point did we as a society decide that it was perfectly acceptable for companies to manipulate us - especially children - into buying shit we don’t need and didn’t even want until the ad sold us on it? It’s fucking wild.
Adblocking feels to me like it should be illegal, but isn’t. I have adblockers on all my devices and haven’t seen an ad for years; it feels like a secret super power and stopped the web from looking like a trashy back alley.
I am always shocked when I have to use a browser without an ad blocker. How do people tolerate it?
I mean, I get it. I know many people have no idea about adblocking, etc. But goddam. It’s so awful without it.
Every time i accidentally open chrome instead of waterfox on my tablet jeeesus christ
Use DNS-based blocking. I put Tomato firmware on my router and block for all devices on my network. Rethink can selfhost DNS on Android too.
yah I’m putting in a pihole,but I gotta get off my arse and finish configuring my bigtree for the 3d printer to free up the pi first. It’s a process.
You should rawdog fox news sometime. Their cookie pop-up is WILD
Marketing wasn’t really a thing until sometime around the Industrial Revolution and post-WW1. Before then, we didn’t really have the capacity to produce more than what people needed. Marketing basically just consisted of “here’s my product, here’s why it’s superior to others.” But with the post-war boom and the rise in manufacturing, producers were suddenly able to out-produce the demand. So they invented marketing, to get people to buy things that they didn’t actually need. The idea of “create a problem so you can sell the solution” was born.
You can thank Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays
Specifically his 1928 book Propaganda which basically created PR and modern advertising.
And the fact that a lot of children’s TV shows are nothing but thinly veiled toy commercials. Hilariously parodied in Dinosaurs
It happened gradually, like frogs in a kettle.
When it was just a guy putting up a sign in front of his smithy it was kind of harmless. Ditto for having a single text-only paper ad for people who are new to town. But, it was a slippery slope.
Yeah that’s kind of my point: society has not stopped to think about the fact that the water is at a full boil and has been for a while. If I had my way ads would just be a basic, boring, ‘This product/service exists, and this is what an independent panel of testers has determined about its functions and capabilities.’ There have definitely been products that were advertised to me that make my life easier and that I use every day, so I don’t want to lose the ability to discover them, I just also don’t want these companies putting their dick in my ass and whispering into my ear that I’m not good enough person as a person if I don’t like it.
Frogs will not stay in the kettle :)
Yes, it’s true. Let me know when a more scientifically accurate idiom comes along, though. I also still use “like a bull in a china shop”.
It was only like 6 months ago I learned that a bull will actually be extremely careful in a china shop (or equivalent) unless its concerned.
Are most of our idioms just wrong?
Hmm. The warfare-related ones are pretty spot on. Wet powder sucks, if you’re not careful your musket can go off half-cocked and ironclads were well armoured. Ditto for taking no prisoners, although we tend to frown on that now.
My guess would be the more practical it would have been at some point, the less likely it started as a misconception.
Ordered food at Sonic on their app. After I ordered, it popped up with ads for travel, various credit cards, etc. Completely crazy to me that they’re triple dipping on monetization now (sell me food, sell my data and then sell me other shit while trying to sell me food.)
I recently went to Sonic, didn’t use the app, and ended up with norovirus for free.
Corporations that don’t pay taxes being allowed to make millions in profit while their employees qualify for welfare because they pay them so little.
What’s worse is those same organisations get corporate welfare (tax breaks) but fight tooth and nail to prevent their workers from getting it.
They should just make it so that whatever they announce as their “earnings” to their stockholders should also be the amount that they are taxed for.
The FTC under Biden was actually craking down on that. It was called the “Click to Cancel” rule, but that was literally a month before the election. :/
Lina Khan was a perhaps once in a lifetime bureaucrat doing good for the people at a rapid pace on normal government timelines and now she’ll probably never get that job or a better one again.
Loaning money to your own political campaign and then paying yourself back, including an interest rate set by you, using donor funds.
There are a number of things that are legal here in the US, which would count as corruption in other places.
Shooting plainclothes cops that execute a no-knock warrant on your home.
Seriously.
All states–ALL states–have a castle doctrine that allows you to use lethal defense to protect yourself inside your home. A no-knock warrant being executed by cops out of uniform means that you have a reasonable belief that your home is being invaded, and that your life is at immediate risk. Now, admittedly, you probably aren’t going to survive that exchange of gunfire. But the state is going to have a really hard time charging you with shooting at/killing a cop if you do.
About dozen States do NOT have a castle doctrine, and have duty to retreat laws instead.
No, castle doctrine exists in all states. You do not have a duty to retreat when it’s inside your own home in almost all cases.
Very cool link! Wasn’t expecting China to have had such rules
In some parts of the US (at least, maybe nationally) the castle doctrine even extends to your car. It is thought of as an “extension” of your home/castle.
Edit: spelling
I’m gonna assume by “all states” you mean “all states within the USA”.
I believe that most other countries call them provinces rather than states. But yes, if you live in a country that has a normal police force, and you don’t have to worry about out-of-uniform cops using no-knock warrants to kick your front door in, then this is definitely not going to apply to you.
In Indiana cops are not excluded from castle laws
Even better: you have a specific legal right to resist police attempting to illegally enter your home. :D IIRC, the law was passed after the Indiana Supreme Court ruled that under then state law you had no right to resist even blatantly illegal actions by police.
Companies changing the terms of the contract on you.
Yes, but - in many of those contracts (particularly end-user license agreements) you agreed to them changing the terms of the contract. You also have an “out” - not using the product any more.
You’re right though: it’s slimy. Anything slimy thing can be put into a contract!
Source: I’m not a lawyer, but worked in an office with a lot of them, and worked with software license agreements in particular.
I’m so curious now. Do you know how those apply? I mean, can they change the terms on you without notice or is that notice legally required? And say they want to feed all your data of however many years to AI. If you accidentally use it once, do they get permission for everything? What if you agree only because you want to delete your data?
I have so many questions. lol
You usually get an email saying something is changing. Problem is, you’ve already paid and if it’s a material change, now you have to agree to continue using your property. Sometimes you don’t get a notice and it’s a “software update” that now pushes ads onto a product you bought and are now shit outta luck since you can’t return it. Samsung and Roku are bad for this.
Samsung and Roku are bad for this.
You’re buying the hardware; they provide the software as a service. Oh, sure, no agreeing to a unilateral change of conditions on the software means that your hardware is rendered worthless, but still… And yeah, that’s pretty much the way that actually works.
IP law can start getting pretty strange.
For subscriptions, I highly recommend using disposable cards like Privacy.com (no affiliation, just a customer). If I want to try out Prime, or Starz, or a “free until…” promotional offer, I just spin up a card. It’s connected to my bank account, locked to that single merchant, and they can’t charge more than whatever spending limit I put on that card. Honestly, I don’t always even sign in to a service to cancel, it’s much easier to just pause or delete a card, and then they can’t charge you anymore. It’s free for us because they collect a small portion of the transaction amount (like Visa, PayPal, etc)…
police being able to lie to you
This is illegal in the UK
“Are you an undercover cop” actually works in the UK?
Of course not that’ll be ridiculous… during questioning, arrest etc
A free trial automatically rolling into a paid subscription.
Any type of exit fee like account closing. Any costs for leaving should be charges before leaving as part of business costs either at the start or part of monthly or whatever. Leaving should be free.
Looking at you, Adobe.
Cunts buying politicians.
Is that not illegal?!
The fucking president has a shitcoin that ppl are using to pay tribute.
The fucking president
… is Coin Operated.
EULAs that say ‘using this <whatever> indicates your acceptance of these terms’. Seems like it ought to be illegal but it’s super common.
Paying for anything and then being stopped from owning it should be illegal.
What the fuck am I buying software for if not to own it and have my privacy protected while using it?
Fuck EULA’s and the companies trying to push the boundaries of acceptable behaviour 😤 just for a couple extra bucks selling our data to the highest bidder.
Just because they put it in the terms doesn’t it legal.
You know, I’m not actually sure how binding it is exactly, aside from not totally. It must do something or they wouldn’t bother getting pretend consent.
It kinda does make it legal. If you don’t agree to the terms of the product, then you are using it illegally. It sucks, but that’s where the law is. I am typing this on a Linux laptop in Firefox, but those have terms and conditions, too!
That depends on the location/jurisdiction, but I do have a hard time believing that any court would uphold a EULA stating that you have to cook dinner for any Microsoft employee that happens to request it, just because to installed Windows 11.
I believe a fair number of juristictions also invalidate any EULA that’s only viewable after you’ve purchased a product so most software EULAs are worth less than toilet paper anyway.
EULA’s are widely honored and established law. However, anyone can push back on anything they put in an agreement.
To fight Microsoft, you have to fight Microsoft’s lawyers, in Microsoft’s jurisdiction. But you can’t sue them, because you already agreed to arbitration. And you’d have to pay lawyers in what would be a long, drawn out process.
If Microsoft demands things that are incredibly weird like what you describe above, there definitely would be a chance it could be appealed to a court and eventually see a judge. I think it would be a long and expensive process for both sides getting there. And Microsoft’s argument would be, “The user has the option to stop using it.”
There are undoubtedly severance clauses in there, so if a court deems a part of a license illegal, then it is stricken, and the rest of the agreement stands.
So, Microsoft’s lawyers only put things in the agreement that they are 99+% sure of wanting and winning. So they probably won’t request your spleen. They don’t want that. They just want your money, your data, and your eyeballs connected to your brain.
Surprisingly a lot of clauses in EULAS are and get “stricken” (even though this one still stands).
Leaving a supermarket without buying anything
That largely depends on what you take with you as you leave.
Capitalism
Dating sites besieging their users with bots and fake profiles.
