#Consumer Protection

[mypatchworkreflection]

"The target of the latest consumer protection rule unveiled by the Biden-Harris administration's Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday is, as one journalist said, "one of those things that sounds minor but is at the heart of many of the frustrations of American life": The hoops people in the U.S. are required to jump through to cancel subscriptions or services they no longer want or need.

The FTC announced that its "click-to-cancel" rule, part of the agency's review of the 1973 Negative Option Rule, was finalized and will go into effect 180 days after it is published in the Federal Register.

Under the rule, sellers will be required to "make it as easy for consumers to cancel their enrollment as it was to sign up," said the FTC."

[politijohn]

Source

Source

Nothing to see here!

[reasonsforhope]

"Legislative momentum against PFAS has surged this year, as at least 11 states enacted laws to restrict the use of “forever chemicals” in everyday consumer products or professional firefighting foam.

The legislation includes bans on PFAS in apparel, cleaning products, cookware, and cosmetic and menstrual products. Meanwhile, lawmakers in some states also passed measures that require industries to pay for testing or cleanup; order companies to disclose the use of PFAS in their products; and mandate or encourage the development of PFAS alternatives, according to Safer States, an alliance of environmental health groups focused on toxic chemicals.

In total this year, at least 16 states adopted 22 PFAS-related measures, according to the group. Since 2007, 30 states have approved 155 PFAS policies, the vast majority of them in the past five years.

The thousands of chemicals categorized as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, do not naturally break down and are found in the blood of 97% of Americans. Some PFAS compounds can harm the immune system, increase cancer risks and decrease fertility...

Earlier this year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released new standards limiting PFAS in drinking water. Water systems have five years to comply with the rules. Even before the EPA action, 11 states had set their own limits on PFAS in drinking water, starting with New Jersey in 2018.

Water utilities and chemical manufacturers are challenging the new EPA standards. But states also are heading to the courthouse: So far, 30 states have sued PFAS manufacturers or key users for contaminating water supplies and other natural resources, according to Safer States...

Sarah Doll, national director of Safer States, said one reason states have been so successful in enacting PFAS limits is that more companies are willing to stop using the chemicals.

“When California restricted PFAS in textiles, all of a sudden you saw companies like REI saying, ‘We can, we’re going to do that. We’re going to move to alternatives,’” Doll said.

In Vermont, state lawmakers in April unanimously approved a measure banning the manufacture and sale of PFAS in cosmetics, menstrual products, incontinence products, artificial turf, textiles and cookware.

“The same as everyone else, like Democrats, we want to make sure that we remove PFAS and get it out of products as soon as we can,” said Vermont Republican state Rep. Michael Marcotte, who said his district includes cosmetics manufacturer Rozelle Cosmetics, in Westfield.

Democratic state Sen. Virginia Lyons, the chief sponsor of the Vermont bill, said it is particularly important to get PFAS out of products that are essential to consumers.

“There are some consumer products where you can say, ‘I don’t need to buy that, because I don’t want PFAS,’” Lyons said. “But it’s really tough to say that [about] a menstrual product.”

California’s latest PFAS measure, which Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed last month, specifically bans the use of PFAS in menstrual products. Democratic Assemblymember Diane Papan, the author of the bill, said it was particularly strong because it covers both intentional and unintentional uses of PFAS, so “manufacturers will have to really be careful about what comes in their supply chain.”

While more states enact laws focused on specific products, Maine is preparing to implement the world’s first PFAS ban covering all consumer goods. The Maine law, which is scheduled to take effect in 2030, will include exceptions for “essential” products for which PFAS-free alternatives do not exist. Washington state has also taken a sweeping approach by giving regulators strict timelines to ban PFAS in many product categories.

[nea-dot-im]

So Ross Scott has been trying to build a strategy for how to combat the Games as a Service model where games you bought can be unceremoniously stolen from you by shutting down some servers. I feel this is somewhat important, and here's the video shared on Tumblr!

https://www.stopkillinggames.com/

[alyfoxxxen]

FTC sues John Deere over farmers' right to repair tractors : NPR

[verschlimmbesserung]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 18, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Jan 19, 2025

Shortly before midnight last night, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published its initial findings from a study it undertook last July when it asked eight large companies to turn over information about the data they collect about consumers, product sales, and how the surveillance the companies used affected consumer prices. The FTC focused on the middlemen hired by retailers. Those middlemen use algorithms to tweak and target prices to different markets.

The initial findings of the FTC using data from six of the eight companies show that those prices are not static. Middlemen can target prices to individuals using their location, browsing patterns, shopping history, and even the way they move a mouse over a webpage. They can also use that information to show higher-priced products first in web searches. The FTC found that the intermediaries—the middlemen—worked with at least 250 retailers.

“Initial staff findings show that retailers frequently use people’s personal information to set targeted, tailored prices for goods and services—from a person's location and demographics, down to their mouse movements on a webpage,” said FTC chair Lina Khan. “The FTC should continue to investigate surveillance pricing practices because Americans deserve to know how their private data is being used to set the prices they pay and whether firms are charging different people different prices for the same good or service.”

The FTC has asked for public comment on consumers’ experience with surveillance pricing.

FTC commissioner Andrew N. Ferguson, whom Trump has tapped to chair the commission in his incoming administration, dissented from the report.

Matt Stoller of the nonprofit American Economic Liberties Project, which is working “to address today’s crisis of concentrated economic power,” wrote that “[t]he antitrust enforcers (Lina Khan et al) went full Tony Montana on big business this week before Trump people took over.”

Stoller made a list. The FTC sued John Deere “for generating $6 billion by prohibiting farmers from being able to repair their own equipment,” released a report showing that pharmacy benefit managers had “inflated prices for specialty pharmaceuticals by more than $7 billion,” “sued corporate landlord Greystar, which owns 800,000 apartments, for misleading renters on junk fees,” and “forced health care private equity powerhouse Welsh Carson to stop monopolization of the anesthesia market.”

It sued Pepsi for conspiring to give Walmart exclusive discounts that made prices higher at smaller stores, “​​[l]eft a roadmap for parties who are worried about consolidation in AI by big tech by revealing a host of interlinked relationships among Google, Amazon and Microsoft and Anthropic and OpenAI,” said gig workers can’t be sued for antitrust violations when they try to organize, and forced game developer Cognosphere to pay a $20 million fine for marketing loot boxes to teens under 16 that hid the real costs and misled the teens.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “sued Capital One for cheating consumers out of $2 billion by misleading consumers over savings accounts,” Stoller continued. It “forced Cash App purveyor Block…to give $120 million in refunds for fostering fraud on its platform and then refusing to offer customer support to affected consumers,” “sued Experian for refusing to give consumers a way to correct errors in credit reports,” ordered Equifax to pay $15 million to a victims’ fund for “failing to properly investigate errors on credit reports,” and ordered “Honda Finance to pay $12.8 million for reporting inaccurate information that smeared the credit reports of Honda and Acura drivers.”

The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice sued “seven giant corporate landlords for rent-fixing, using the software and consulting firm RealPage,” Stoller went on. It “sued $600 billion private equity titan KKR for systemically misleading the government on more than a dozen acquisitions.”

“Honorary mention goes to [Secretary Pete Buttigieg] at the Department of Transportation for suing Southwest and fining Frontier for ‘chronically delayed flights,’” Stoller concluded. He added more results to the list in his newsletter BIG.

Meanwhile, last night, while the leaders in the cryptocurrency industry were at a ball in honor of President-elect Trump’s inauguration, Trump launched his own cryptocurrency. By morning he appeared to have made more than $25 billion, at least on paper. According to Eric Lipton at the New York Times, “ethics experts assailed [the business] as a blatant effort to cash in on the office he is about to occupy again.”

Adav Noti, executive director of the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, told Lipton: “It is literally cashing in on the presidency—creating a financial instrument so people can transfer money to the president’s family in connection with his office. It is beyond unprecedented.” Cryptocurrency leaders worried that just as their industry seems on the verge of becoming mainstream, Trump’s obvious cashing-in would hurt its reputation. Venture capitalist Nick Tomaino posted: “Trump owning 80 percent and timing launch hours before inauguration is predatory and many will likely get hurt by it.”

Yesterday the European Commission, which is the executive arm of the European Union, asked X, the social media company owned by Trump-adjacent billionaire Elon Musk, to hand over internal documents about the company’s algorithms that give far-right posts and politicians more visibility than other political groups. The European Union has been investigating X since December 2023 out of concerns about how it deals with the spread of disinformation and illegal content. The European Union’s Digital Services Act regulates online platforms to prevent illegal and harmful activities, as well as the spread of disinformation.

Today in Washington, D.C., the National Mall was filled with thousands of people voicing their opposition to President-elect Trump and his policies. Online speculation has been rampant that Trump moved his inauguration indoors to avoid visual comparisons between today’s protesters and inaugural attendees. Brutally cold weather also descended on President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, but a sea of attendees nonetheless filled the National Mall.

Trump has always understood the importance of visuals and has worked hard to project an image of an invincible leader. Moving the inauguration indoors takes away that image, though, and people who have spent thousands of dollars to travel to the capital to see his inauguration are now unhappy to discover they will be limited to watching his motorcade drive by them. On social media, one user posted: “MAGA doesn’t realize the symbolism of [Trump] moving the inauguration inside: The billionaires, millionaires and oligarchs will be at his side, while his loyal followers are left outside in the cold. Welcome to the next 4+ years.”

Trump is not as good at governing as he is at performance: his approach to crises is to blame Democrats for them. But he is about to take office with majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, putting responsibility for governance firmly into his hands.

Right off the bat, he has at least two major problems at hand.

Last night, Commissioner Tyler Harper of the Georgia Department of Agriculture suspended all “poultry exhibitions, shows, swaps, meets, and sales” until further notice after officials found Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, or bird flu, in a commercial flock. As birds die from the disease or are culled to prevent its spread, the cost of eggs is rising—just as Trump, who vowed to reduce grocery prices, takes office.

There have been 67 confirmed cases of the bird flu in the U.S. among humans who have caught the disease from birds. Most cases in humans are mild, but public health officials are watching the virus with concern because bird flu variants are unpredictable. On Friday, outgoing Health and Human Services secretary Xavier Becerra announced $590 million in funding to Moderna to help speed up production of a vaccine that covers the bird flu. Juliana Kim of NPR explained that this funding comes on top of $176 million that Health and Human Services awarded to Moderna last July.

The second major problem is financial. On Friday, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen wrote to congressional leaders to warn them that the Treasury would hit the debt ceiling on January 21 and be forced to begin using extraordinary measures in order to pay outstanding obligations and prevent defaulting on the national debt. Those measures mean the Treasury will stop paying into certain federal retirement accounts as required by law, expecting to make up that difference later.

Yellen reminded congressional leaders: “The debt limit does not authorize new spending, but it creates a risk that the federal government might not be able to finance its existing legal obligations that Congresses and Presidents of both parties have made in the past.” She added, “I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”

Both the avian flu and the limits of the debt ceiling must be managed, and managed quickly, and solutions will require expertise and political skill.

Rather than offering their solutions to these problems, the Trump team leaked that it intended to begin mass deportations on Tuesday morning in Chicago, choosing that city because it has large numbers of immigrants and because Trump’s people have been fighting with Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, a Democrat. Michelle Hackman, Joe Barrett, and Paul Kiernan of the Wall Street Journal, who broke the story, reported that Trump’s people had prepared to amplify their efforts with the help of right-wing media.

But once the news leaked of the plan and undermined the “shock and awe” the administration wanted, Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan said the team was reconsidering it.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Michael Stratford at Politico:

Elon Musk said Wednesday that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau should be abolished, calling for the elimination of an agency that would potentially regulate the future payments business of the Musk-owned X platform. “Delete CFPB,” Musk, who is leading an effort on behalf of President-elect Donald Trump to shrink the size of the federal government, wrote in a post on X. “There are too many duplicative regulatory agencies.” Trump on the campaign trail called for easing regulation of the financial industry generally but didn’t explicitly call for the elimination of the CFPB, which Republicans have railed against for years. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint, which Trump sought to distance himself from during the campaign, recommended the agency be shut down.

Trump is widely expected to rein in the Biden-era CFPB’s regulatory agenda and ease enforcement against companies, as he did during his first term in office. But eliminating the agency entirely, as Musk appears to be proposing, would require an act of Congress. Republicans and the financial industry have long targeted the CFPB for what they consider its overly aggressive regulation, though efforts to take down the agency in Congress and in the courts have largely been unsuccessful. GOP lawmakers, even under Republican control, have lacked the votes to eliminate or defund the CFPB. And more recently the Supreme Court earlier this year upheld the agency’s funding structure as constitutional. Musk’s statement comes less than a week after the CFPB finalized a regulation that would expand its oversight of big tech companies that offer payment and digital wallet apps. That would potentially include X, which has explored ways to enter the payments business. Musk said when he purchased X, previously known as Twitter, that he wanted to transform the site into an “everything app” that included the ability of users to store money and send payments. Since then, X Payments has obtained licenses to transmit payments from dozens of state regulators.

[...] Musk’s post came in response to a video clip of the prominent investor Marc Andreessen telling podcaster Joe Rogan that he believes that the CFPB was “terrorizing” tech firms and start-ups that want to compete with big banks. Andreessen’s venture capital firm, Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z, invested in a company, LendUp Loans that was shut down by the CFPB over allegations of illegal marketing and fair lending violations. At the time, the CFPB noted that the company, which pitched itself as a payday lender alternative, had been backed by Andreessen’s firm, among other prominent venture capitalists.

Anti-workers’ rights extremist Elon Musk calls for the elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). A move to eliminate the CFPB is an attack on accountability and consumer protections.

[wemlygust]

If your Microsoft 365 Subscription Price went up, this is relevant to you:

Hoping this saves someone some $$$$. In short, Microsoft auto-upgraded people on the Basic tier of their 365 subscription to the middle tier that includes copilot (with no option to turn it off), renamed the middle tier to Basic, and renamed the original Basic tier AND hid it from the subscription types options, in hopes that people won't realize they've just been auto-"upgraded" to a more expensive tier that also allows them to train their AI on your work. If you contact Microsoft support and are stubborn, or possibly (according to some of the comments on that youtube video) if you turn off auto-renewal and then look at options for re-subscribing, you can still get the original Basic tier that you had before, for the same price as you had before. Given that they are obviously not trustworthy has a subscription service, though, I'd recommend instead trying the LibreOffice (my personal favorite) or OpenOffice software suites (including Word Processor software, Spreadsheets software, etc) - both of which are 100% free. And both of which can save documents in Microsoft 365 formats so that others can still open and read your documents using Microsoft products.

[stijlw]

bought a picture frame this evening and tonight it broke in my hands as i removed the shrink wrap. like the MDF fully snapped. heading back first thing tomorrow to demand my money back for defective materials. does anyone have any tips? i'm not very assertive. i think i'll try crying. asking to speak to the manager but absolutely bawling so hard they can't even make out what i'm saying

[karadin]

While you were sleeping ...

Two plane crashes in two days create the largest amount of fatalities in the US in more than twenty years

In DC a passenger plane collided with a US military helicopter, 67 people were killed.

Trump blamed Diversity and Inclusion polices under Democratic administrations for the accident, and refused to go to the site of the crash as it was 'just water'. However the current hiring practices for air traffic controllers were put in place when Trump was President.

A small private medical plane crashed in Philadelphia, killing all on board and injuring people on the ground.

Elon Musk forced the Head of the FAA out of office, as this individual was prosecuting Musk for accidents involving Musk's company SpaceX

Trump shut down the Aviation Security Advisory Committee last week as well as firing the Transportation Secretary, and put a freeze on all government hires when he was inaugurated, which left the DC tower with only one air traffic controller at the time of the accident instead of two.

Trump plans to put 25% tariffs on our allies Canada and Mexico and a 10% tariff on China (additional) as of Feb 1,

which is tanking the stock market and guaranteed to raise prices if trade wars begin

The a top Treasury official, having served in a non partisan fashion for 30 years is retiring in protest over Elon Musk seeking access to all federal monies through The Bureau of Fiscal Service

This secure system processes Social Security and Medicare benefits, federal salaries, payments to government contractors, grants, and tax refunds, among it's purview. Only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Experts do not know why Musk would need this level of access.

ELON MUSK LOCKS FEDERAL EMPLOYEES OUT OF THEIR ACCOUNTS

Workers at the Office of Personnel Management, have had their access to department data revoked. They lost access to the Enterprise Human Resources Integration database, which includes the dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades, and length of service of government workers.

“We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems, There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications.”

Trump changed the email system so that every single federal worker could be contacted with one email. all 13,000 employees of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, were flooded with explicit spam emails on Thursday.

The federal gov system email no longer has a basic form of security. Trump admin is now being sued for the lack of privacy for all federal employees

Trump has fired all prosecutors at the DOJ who were linked to investigations of Jan 6th insurrection, despite the fact they were only following the direction of their bosses. The prosecuters might file a class action lawsuit.

Trump fired the Head of the Consumer Protection Agency

which among it's numerous investigations held Wall Street accountable for cheating hard-working families and prevented the de-banking of Americans across the country

FEDERAL EMPLOYEES ARE NOT TAKING TRUMP'S FALSE 'BUYOUT' which has led to a begging email from Trump, the President has no authority and no budget to pay employees for not working.

Trump is telling federal employees to remove any pronouns from their email signatures

Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois is blocking any January 6 rioters pardoned by Donald Trump from working for the state, other states may follow suit.

Trump has gutted the National Labor Relations Board and moves to invalidate labor agreements with federal workers

Thousands of agents with the FBI are facing reivews, possible loyalty tests and terminations

ELON MUSK has put his employees into the General Services Administration which controls public buildings, he's taking their proprietary public-paid tech and planning to sell off government real estate.

REMEMBER, THE OFFICE OF DOGE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE 'ADVISORY' NOT LET LOOSE TO CONTROL THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT, ONLY CONGRESS CAN SET THE BUDGET AND DIRECT SPENDING, ALL OF THESE ACTIONS ARE ILLEGAL.

SEEYOU IN COURT

[kassical]

Ross actually has a site up and running now regarding how to stop publishers fucking people over and taking away usability of their games. Some of the petitions aren't up yet and still getting approved but there's other things people can do (mostly specifically if they own The Crew).

He's got a video here too that breaks down what this is all for if you want to check it out:

[victusinveritas]

Here in the U.S, freedom means we get to CHOOSE which poison waffle we feed our kids. TreeHouse Foods is, of course, owned by private equity.

[onlytiktoks]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-19/elon-musk-is-trying-to-shut-the-cfpb-what-should-consumers-know

[alyfoxxxen]

Federal judge blocks Musk team’s effort to shutter top consumer agency | Trump administration | The Guardian