Disney, Netflix, and More Are Fighting FTC's 'Click to Cancel' Proposal

Re:Disney, Netflix, and More Are Fighting FTC's 'Click to Ca... by dontrustme on Thursday July 13, 2023 @02:54PM (#36714281)

It's the fact that unsubscribing to several services on a mobile phone is a nearly impossible task that is infuriating to me. Most streaming apps immediately divert you to their app (if it's installed) if you search for them on the web. These same apps will also tell you to "go to the web to manage your subscription". This forces the user to first delete the app and cross their fingers that the website doesn't just bounce them back over the app store.

Also, why has safari's mobile "request desktop site" not worked for me in over 5 years? It never brings a desktop site anymore... so annoying.

Apple tried to fix this by diverting any in-app subscriptions thru their app store, but because they take such a substantial cut of the sub revenue, companies would rather redirect users to the web to buy a sub and not provide the capability within the app. Despite Apple's efforts here, it has completely backfired and made the end user experience a deplorable state of affairs.

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Re:Disney, Netflix, and More Are Fighting FTC's 'Click to Ca... by belthesar on Thursday July 13, 2023 @03:18PM (#36714622)

> Also, why has safari's mobile "request desktop site" not worked for me in over 5 years? It never brings a desktop site anymore... so annoying.

Likely because the site's fingerprinting to determine if you are on a mobile device uses more heuristics than the "Request Desktop Site" functionality leverages. This, IIRC, is just a user agent hack, but browsers send a _lot_ more data about your machine than just a user agent.

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Re:Disney, Netflix, and More Are Fighting FTC's 'Click to Ca... by wryanzimmerman on Friday July 14, 2023 @01:08AM (#36719703)

> Also, why has safari's mobile "request desktop site" not worked for me in over 5 years?

In large part because it’s really bad practice to have separate desktop and mobile sites, it’s generally better to just have one responsive site.

However, some badly designed sides achieve “responsiveness” by hiding functionally, which is bad because phones have no way to “zoom out” (emulate a larger screen size) to get the buttons to show up.

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