[c7b]

I'm old enough to remember that capitalism used to always feel like this. Even worse. Predatory subscriptions, targeting minors in some cases (remember phone ringtones?), toll numbers, unclear fees, surprise bills (my favorite - roaming fees in your home country because the phone stayed logged into the foreign network after an abroad trip). Silicon Valley/YC style startups felt like a breath of fresh air. Generous return policies, subscriptions can be canceled monthly and even do so automatically in a lot of cases (eg disabled credit card). I guess the fact that a lot of what they offered has near zero marginal cost helped. AI changed that part, so we're back to what I would consider the natural state.

The least-resistance path out of such a bad equilibrium is regulation. And they did add a lot of protections in the last decades, which probably helped too. Some would say places like the EU even added too many. But I'm pretty sure that "if you're using our product, you need to pay" would fly even in the most customer-friendly jurisdictions today.

[inigyou]

It would, and the EU would actually be worse on this. In many if not all EU countries (DACH at the very least) you'd have to pay because you agreed to pay, and you'd have to pay all court and legal fees you caused as well - while in the US the company is more likely to just forget about it and try for another customer.