What feels illegal but isn't?
What feels illegal but isn't?
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.
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
Capitalism
Dating sites besieging their users with bots and fake profiles.
I think in the eu we have some legislation about it. I have the feeling of reading about a law like that before. Subscription buttons needing to be as clear as unsubscribe.
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.
I don't know how this works in the US, but where I live after a year subscription (let's say for your internet provider or something). They can only renew per month. So if the year subscription is over you can cancel any service every month and they can't hit you with any fees.
Back in the day if you'd forgot to cancel your plan you'd be stuck with them for another year. It sucked!
In the US, unsubscribing from email spam is legally required to be easy under the CAN-SPAM act. For paid subscription services, I believe they also are required to be as easy to leave as they are to join in the EU and California.
Somewhat related, many dark patterns are treated like fraud.
the CAN-SPAM act
I once wrote a community college paper for my friend in exchange for some work on my car. He had to write a paper on the CAN-SPAM act.
I did the assignment, covered all the requirements, explained it and whatnot. I then wrote a SECOND paper, appended to the end of the first. This second paper also met the length requirements, but was a parody. About the Hormel meat product, Spam. In cans. Can-Spam. I was very proud of it. It was funny.
I kept asking my friend if he ever got feedback from the professor. He never did. It was then that I learned professors often don’t read papers like this, they just assign them to get students to read and practice writing. It made me sad.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's weird they don't put more effort into stopping them, TBH. I've heard it's because they'd rather collect extra analytics than do any foolproofing that might interfere with it.
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.
And the fact that a lot of children's TV shows are nothing but thinly veiled toy commercials. Hilariously parodied in Dinosaurs
Worst part is, those are usually the best ones.
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.
Frogs will not stay in the kettle :)
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.
You can thank Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward Bernays
Specifically his 1928 book Propaganda which basically created PR and modern advertising.
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.
all i’m going to say is whatever shit adobe is pulling because i could yap about this forever with anyone
Which particular part? I'm interested and somewhat outside of the situation.
the fact that they decided to charge $90 a month and $65 to cancel is truly evil
Cunts buying politicians.
Is that not illegal?!
The fucking president has a shitcoin that ppl are using to pay tribute.
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.
Surprisingly a lot of clauses in EULAS are and get "stricken" (even though this one still stands).
Biden administration was working on making that unsubscribe bullshit illegal last year. But then Trump so those tactics will probably be mandatory pretty soon...
I thought that happened? I’ve noticed unsubscribing is generally like 2 clicks now. I almost always see a link at the bottom of emails.
Click to Cancel was put in as a rule, but it requires active enforcement. It also had a 180 day grace period from last October, so it hasn't even gone into effect yet.
Leaving a supermarket without buying anything
That largely depends on what you take with you as you leave.
My car insurance goes up as my car loses value. Years ago you could choose to only insure it up to a certain amount. My kids drove an older car and i designated $10k in insurance for it. That cut the insurance price to about 60%. Texas no longer allows that.
Isn't most of the insurance for liability? I can see a logic where older cars are less safe, and thus accidents are more likely and would cost more, hence the higher costs. But I'm just guessing.
Collision insurance, the kind that pays for damage to the policy holder's car in the event of a crash caused by the policy holder or an authorized driver of their car often more than doubles the overall cost of insurance. Collision insurance is usually optional when there's not a loan.
Your car may lose value, but the cost to repair goes up. Hence the insurance increases. Also the likelihood of a total loss goes up as well.
The insurance will never pay more than the value of the car, so if the repair cost goes too high they'll just declare it a total loss and pay the "fair market value" of the car. And yes, a total loss is more likely, but that doesn't mean the insurance pays more, on the contrary, they use that to pay less.
Ripping a tag from a pillow that says "Under Penalty of Law: Not to be Removed By Anyone but the Consumer"
Going through TSA.
Voting/speaking against fascism
Yet.....It's not illegal yet.
I like that growth mindset!
Fun fact: There's technically a right to free speech in the constitution of the People's Republic of China. But we all know how that goes.
Just like with any rule in any society; without enforcement, they are nothing but merely the words of people. ahem USA ahem
Riding down a mountain road on a bicycle, going 50 mph, without a helmet on.
Having the door held open for you while walking towards it but changing directions in the last moment.
Yes, there's a lot of unspoken rules that are out there, but never actually enforced. Facing the other way in an elevator was one example I remember from my social sciences classes.
If I saw someone facing the rear wall/corner of an elevator but not acting unusual in any other way I think I'd feel like I was getting pranked somehow, lmao. I could go in and use the elevator and nothing could happen but one or more people facing the "wrong" way and I'd feel like I was the butt of a joke in some unfathomable way
I think it's the unnecessary number of turns you'd need to make to actually use the elevator but still face the rear well while using it that makes it feel weird to me, but idk
That actually is illegal.
What surprisingly is legal: dating a 14yo.
Weird country.
Which one?
No
Interest based loans. It’s completely legal to use debt to kick the poor deeper into the gutter so that they can never stand up again.
Political parties sending you a reply-paid envelope that says it'll enrol you to vote postal ballot, with a return address that sends your information to that party, so long as they eventually do forward your info on to the Electoral Commission to register you for a postal vote.
I have no idea what any of this means
In Australia, one way you can apply for a postal vote is by sending an application form by mail to the Australian Electoral Commission—the nonpartisan government agency responsible for overseeing federal elections.
Political parties like our centre-right–to–far-right LNP and centre-left–to–centre-right Labor will often send you a letter, in the lead-up to an election. Inside that letter will be an application form, and a reply-paid envelope addressed to the party headquarters. But the address doesn't say "LNP party headquarters", it says something like "postal vote centre".
If you fill out the form, I believe the parties are obligated to send it on to the AEC. But there is no law preventing them from harvesting your data to use for marketing purposes before they do so. Because political parties have exempted themselves from a lot of the usual privacy laws.
There have also been accusations that they might delay sending your details on by a few days if you're from an area less likely to vote for them. Increasing the chances your postal vote doesn't arrive in time for you to actually use it. Not sure how founded that is, and I doubt it would be legal, but it also may be difficult to prove.
Most investment instruments, apparently, going by the reactions I get when I explain shorting IRL. It's like people think there's only a few approved transactions and doing anything creative (or actually standard but clever) must be a crime. Feudalism's over, guys.
Taking a penny instead of leaving a penny.
What would everyone be leaving them for then?
Entrapment mostly.
stealing food from the grocery store
depends, many placed closed down as of recently due to the massive lifting problem. this is less of a problem in wealthier areas.
Damn, where you live at where this is legal because shit is about to get ROUGH where I'm at and I'm trying to get free groceries.
They write in Finnish in other comments, but I don't seem to be able to confirm or deny the law there, at least not with a quick search.
I did find an article that suggested that it's been ruled legal in Italy, but only if you're homeless and hungry. I can imagine that if you tried it and had any assets whatsoever, they'd find a way to put a lien on those assets rather than let you get away with it.
Move to the EU.
torrenting Wikipedia
oh and crypto mining, like ur actually printing money, how tf is that legal
It's because crypto isn't actually money. It's just something somebody might give you money for.
In theory, you can walk to your nearest forest and collect pine cones and then sell them to people.
That's about the same as crypto, only pine cones are actually useful.
Fiat currency like the US dollar is just as intrinsically worthless. It has value only because people accept that it does, they trade with it, and it has legal status as tender "for all debts, public and private".
People trade bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies for goods all the time, without converting it to USD or anything first. I mean, yeah, usually the thing they're buying is drugs or something but it's the same as handing your local dealer a $20 bill.
Hey now. In harsh3466 land only I have the authority to mint pinecones!
You’re printing the promise of money using your actual money to pay an increased electric bill. Assuming you don’t get scammed, forget your pass, lose your key, etc.
Also destroying the planet for literally no reason (particularly PoW coins like Bitcoin) because difficulty is completely artificial. It’s what makes mining so absurd - the more miners, the more power/silicon wasted, but the output is exactly the same because the release rate is set. More adoption = less efficiency. It’s completely back asswards.
Why would you torrent Wikipedia?
I mean, artisanal gold mining is still a huge thing in certain less-than-awesome areas. The basic way gold works is what inspired it in the first place.
