Ask Lemmy

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.

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.

Loaning money to your own political campaign and then paying yourself back, including an interest rate set by you, using donor funds.

Biden administration was working on making that unsubscribe bullshit illegal last year. But then Trump so those tactics will probably be mandatory pretty soon...

Cunts buying politicians.

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. :/

EULAs that say 'using this indicates your acceptance of these terms'. Seems like it ought to be illegal but it's super common.

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.

Leaving a supermarket without buying anything

Companies changing the terms of the contract on you.

Dating sites besieging their users with bots and fake profiles.

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.

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.

A free trial automatically rolling into a paid subscription.

all i’m going to say is whatever shit adobe is pulling because i could yap about this forever with anyone

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.

Voting/speaking against fascism

That actually is illegal.

What surprisingly is legal: dating a 14yo.

Weird country.

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)...

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.

Capitalism

Pretty much any tax avoidance loopholes. The more money I have the more I see how ridiculously skewed in favor of the rich everything is. My income is taxed at a lower rate than my capital gains, meaning that not only did I make several thousand dollars last year on stock sales I did literally nothing to earn, but I paid very little on taxes for it. There is also a scheme a friend of mine uses to reduce his tax burden even more by recording losses that only exist on paper by swapping between essentially equivalent assets. The system is designed to punish poor people for being poor and reward rich people for being rich.

Having the door held open for you while walking towards it but changing directions in the last moment.

Ripping a tag from a pillow that says "Under Penalty of Law: Not to be Removed By Anyone but the Consumer"

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 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!

Using multiple free trials.

Taking a penny instead of leaving a penny.