7 ms·

If you actually bother to click through and read the article, you'd find the court expressed sympathies with the intent of the rule, but the FTC "is required to

by caesil 1y ago

If you actually bother to click through and read the article, you'd find the court expressed sympathies with the intent of the rule, but the FTC "is required to conduct a preliminary regulatory analysis when a rule has an estimated annual economic effect of $100 million or more", and they did not do that. The blame here belongs to the FTC for its rushed and sloppy process that put the rule on shaky ground legally.

julienchastang 1y ago
> "If you actually bother to click through and read the article," HN guidelines ask that you say "The article mentions that".[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- mh- 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - barbazoo 1y ago
    Two wrongs don't make a right.
    - mh- 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
        > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Sorry bro I had to
        mh- 1y ago
        Hah, totally deserved. I honestly almost added at the end that if I could flag my own comments in this thread they'd be deserving of it, too.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
exabrial 1y ago
^ This. A shoddy implementation would just mean later problems. Hopefully the FTC gets the memo and does it "the right way" to make it watertight, otherwise people will just get away with doing whatever they want.
hiddencost 1y ago
[flagged]
fumeux_fume 1y ago
This is a pretty narrow view. A lot of businesses--whose bread and butter (well maybe just the butter) is keeping people locked into subscriptions they don't want--put a large effort in challenging this rule. They would have fought it like hell during the "analysis" which would have stretched into the Trump presidency were it would surely would have been killed. Even if the analysis had been completed, it's likely the courts would have struck it down for overreach (like Dept of Education's student loan forgiveness). It died because a lot business interests are opposed to it.
- pessimizer 1y ago
  I don't know what you mean by "narrow" here. It sounds like you're saying that they did it at the last minute, and failed to finish. But you're saying that since the next administration would "surely" never do click to cancel, that somehow should immunize the FTC from following their own regulations? The next administration was elected. The reason they have to do studies is so they can't rush things through. We don't want them to be able to rush things through. They're creating law.
rtkwe 1y ago
Depends on how accurate you think the >$100 million estimated impact from the lower court is. When the FTC did the analysis they came up with a lower impact so they didn't have to do it. I'd be more willing to believe they got it right than a single judge did.
- zaphar 1y ago
  Why do you think the FTC analysis was more accurate than the opposing sides? The judges, of whom there were multiple, were going off of opposing side argumentation not just their own subjective opinion. That's how courts in the US work.
  - Forgeties79 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - trealira 1y ago
      More important than the Heritage Foundation is the Federalist Society in the case of getting more conservative judges.
      - Forgeties79 1y ago
        Good catch. That whole pipeline is very robust too - I remember mocking the Burke society folks in college, not realizing at all that they were figuring out who was headed to work with federal judges/think tanks for the next generation.
    - zaphar 1y ago
      Can you point to specific examples where the courts interpretation and reasoning wasn't rooted in the law and the arguments from the lawyers in the court specificall? Because I can't. I might disagree with some of the opinions but I can't point to anything where they were clearly not basing it on the law and the various lawyer's argumentation.
John23832 1y ago
I read the article. It is how I was able to reference the "gotcha".
AndrewKemendo 1y ago
Why are you carrying water for this? The FTC didn’t make that rule. Who do you think created that rule that anything that lost money for advertisers? I’ll give you one guess The fact that you’re indignant that someone doesn’t agree with the argument is absolutely absurd. The law/rule constraint was corrupt from the outset in order to provide multiple avenues for capital to ensure they don’t lose their profits.
- wahnfrieden 1y ago
  Tidy logical explanations of rule systems that click for people are very powerful when they come from authority. There’s a comfort in this sort of bureaucracy that appears to have taken broad considerations to protect us from complex dangers and second order effects.
- jakeydus 1y ago
  Sure, but that's a different argument. OP wasn't carrying water for the companies that would be affected by this change, they were carrying water for the rule of law. If the FTC had sued saying that the $100M limit was too restricting and had no valid basis, then sure, this would be a valid argument. But the judges have to rule on the law as it's written, not as HN commenters would like it to be. Is the law wrong? Corrupt? Maybe! But that's a different conversation. Believe me, I'm incredibly disappointed that this didn't work. I paid a Planet Fitness membership for a year after I had moved to a place too far away from any PF location to reasonably use it, just because the cancellation process was so convoluted that it took me ages to figure out how to cancel. I think that companies should be held liable when they employ predatory business practices like this. I agree with your premise, that the limit is too low and there's nothing to stop companies from lying about the cost to implement the rule. But the law is the law is the law is the law. Courts exist to interpret the law, and in this case, the law they were asked to interpret was whether the FTC had abided by the $100M cap. They found reasonable justification to rule that they had not. Again, I get the desire to be up in arms over this. But recent events have shown just how fragile our legal system is when people decide that the rules can just be ignored, and I wish that people would be more hesitant to throw the baby out with the bathwater, even when doing so would mean I wouldn't have to pay planet fitness $20/mo for a year.
standardUser 1y ago
> you'd find the court expressed sympathies with the intent of the rule And you'd find such sentiments to be completely worthless, except insofar as they act as cover for a ruling on a technicality in favor of the same corporate interests that fund the politicians that appointed these judges.
- epgui 1y ago
  Ruling on technicalities is their job. I don't like the outcome either, but they did their job and they did it well.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- cortesoft 1y ago
  If we don’t want rulings based on technicalities, then don’t put technicalities into the law.
pavon 1y ago
In this case, I'm guessing the FTC knew it was a long shot and took the Hail Mary pass anyway. If they had done the preliminary regulatory analysis the ruling wouldn't have been completed during the Biden administration. So they gambled that it would be better to take their chances with the courts than with the next administration, given both Republican commissioners voted against the rule. Which makes this less of a disappointment to me that it would otherwise.
didibus 1y ago
I don't understand, they did an estimate and found it below 100$ million. That seems to have followed the process. An estimate can always be challenged and is just a best effort prediction. Now it seems this create a pretty flaky ground for precedence that the FTC simply can never estimate less than 100$ million as it could always be challenged in court, what if it was more? And they now have to always follow the more effortful process of assuming it is more than 100$ million. It really seems like a weird line in the sand that the court will just randomly decide on a case by case now, with the FTC having no way to know if the court will agree with their estimate or not.
tsimionescu 1y ago
I find it quite absurd to suggest that a ruling that forces corporations to simplify their business practices would cost $100 million to implement. I would be willing to bet the companies would significantly reduce their spending by following these rules, not increase them. But it's not in any way surprising that they'd find a judge who buys their massively overinflated estimates over the FTC's calculations.

by caesil 1y ago

julienchastang 1y ago

> "If you actually bother to click through and read the article," HN guidelines ask that you say "The article mentions that".[0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

mh- 1y ago
[flagged]
- barbazoo 1y ago
  Two wrongs don't make a right.
  - mh- 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - fkyoureadthedoc 1y ago
      > Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. Sorry bro I had to
      - mh- 1y ago
        Hah, totally deserved. I honestly almost added at the end that if I could flag my own comments in this thread they'd be deserving of it, too.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]

exabrial 1y ago

^ This. A shoddy implementation would just mean later problems. Hopefully the FTC gets the memo and does it "the right way" to make it watertight, otherwise people will just get away with doing whatever they want.

hiddencost 1y ago

[flagged]

fumeux_fume 1y ago

This is a pretty narrow view. A lot of businesses--whose bread and butter (well maybe just the butter) is keeping people locked into subscriptions they don't want--put a large effort in challenging this rule. They would have fought it like hell during the "analysis" which would have stretched into the Trump presidency were it would surely would have been killed. Even if the analysis had been completed, it's likely the courts would have struck it down for overreach (like Dept of Education's student loan forgiveness). It died because a lot business interests are opposed to it.

pessimizer 1y ago
I don't know what you mean by "narrow" here. It sounds like you're saying that they did it at the last minute, and failed to finish. But you're saying that since the next administration would "surely" never do click to cancel, that somehow should immunize the FTC from following their own regulations? The next administration was elected. The reason they have to do studies is so they can't rush things through. We don't want them to be able to rush things through. They're creating law.

rtkwe 1y ago

Depends on how accurate you think the >$100 million estimated impact from the lower court is. When the FTC did the analysis they came up with a lower impact so they didn't have to do it. I'd be more willing to believe they got it right than a single judge did.

zaphar 1y ago
Why do you think the FTC analysis was more accurate than the opposing sides? The judges, of whom there were multiple, were going off of opposing side argumentation not just their own subjective opinion. That's how courts in the US work.
- Forgeties79 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - trealira 1y ago
    More important than the Heritage Foundation is the Federalist Society in the case of getting more conservative judges.
    - Forgeties79 1y ago
      Good catch. That whole pipeline is very robust too - I remember mocking the Burke society folks in college, not realizing at all that they were figuring out who was headed to work with federal judges/think tanks for the next generation.
  - zaphar 1y ago
    Can you point to specific examples where the courts interpretation and reasoning wasn't rooted in the law and the arguments from the lawyers in the court specificall? Because I can't. I might disagree with some of the opinions but I can't point to anything where they were clearly not basing it on the law and the various lawyer's argumentation.

John23832 1y ago

I read the article. It is how I was able to reference the "gotcha".

AndrewKemendo 1y ago

Why are you carrying water for this? The FTC didn’t make that rule. Who do you think created that rule that anything that lost money for advertisers? I’ll give you one guess The fact that you’re indignant that someone doesn’t agree with the argument is absolutely absurd. The law/rule constraint was corrupt from the outset in order to provide multiple avenues for capital to ensure they don’t lose their profits.

wahnfrieden 1y ago
Tidy logical explanations of rule systems that click for people are very powerful when they come from authority. There’s a comfort in this sort of bureaucracy that appears to have taken broad considerations to protect us from complex dangers and second order effects.
jakeydus 1y ago
Sure, but that's a different argument. OP wasn't carrying water for the companies that would be affected by this change, they were carrying water for the rule of law. If the FTC had sued saying that the $100M limit was too restricting and had no valid basis, then sure, this would be a valid argument. But the judges have to rule on the law as it's written, not as HN commenters would like it to be. Is the law wrong? Corrupt? Maybe! But that's a different conversation. Believe me, I'm incredibly disappointed that this didn't work. I paid a Planet Fitness membership for a year after I had moved to a place too far away from any PF location to reasonably use it, just because the cancellation process was so convoluted that it took me ages to figure out how to cancel. I think that companies should be held liable when they employ predatory business practices like this. I agree with your premise, that the limit is too low and there's nothing to stop companies from lying about the cost to implement the rule. But the law is the law is the law is the law. Courts exist to interpret the law, and in this case, the law they were asked to interpret was whether the FTC had abided by the $100M cap. They found reasonable justification to rule that they had not. Again, I get the desire to be up in arms over this. But recent events have shown just how fragile our legal system is when people decide that the rules can just be ignored, and I wish that people would be more hesitant to throw the baby out with the bathwater, even when doing so would mean I wouldn't have to pay planet fitness $20/mo for a year.

standardUser 1y ago

> you'd find the court expressed sympathies with the intent of the rule And you'd find such sentiments to be completely worthless, except insofar as they act as cover for a ruling on a technicality in favor of the same corporate interests that fund the politicians that appointed these judges.

epgui 1y ago
Ruling on technicalities is their job. I don't like the outcome either, but they did their job and they did it well.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
cortesoft 1y ago
If we don’t want rulings based on technicalities, then don’t put technicalities into the law.

pavon 1y ago

In this case, I'm guessing the FTC knew it was a long shot and took the Hail Mary pass anyway. If they had done the preliminary regulatory analysis the ruling wouldn't have been completed during the Biden administration. So they gambled that it would be better to take their chances with the courts than with the next administration, given both Republican commissioners voted against the rule. Which makes this less of a disappointment to me that it would otherwise.

didibus 1y ago

I don't understand, they did an estimate and found it below 100$ million. That seems to have followed the process. An estimate can always be challenged and is just a best effort prediction. Now it seems this create a pretty flaky ground for precedence that the FTC simply can never estimate less than 100$ million as it could always be challenged in court, what if it was more? And they now have to always follow the more effortful process of assuming it is more than 100$ million. It really seems like a weird line in the sand that the court will just randomly decide on a case by case now, with the FTC having no way to know if the court will agree with their estimate or not.

tsimionescu 1y ago

I find it quite absurd to suggest that a ruling that forces corporations to simplify their business practices would cost $100 million to implement. I would be willing to bet the companies would significantly reduce their spending by following these rules, not increase them. But it's not in any way surprising that they'd find a judge who buys their massively overinflated estimates over the FTC's calculations.