Issues You May Know, 18 July 2025.
A list of things you might want to know about - or write your reps about.
If you’re interested in radio communication, make sure to get the correct information.
Don’t get drawn in by deceptive advertising.
Some court cancelled click-to-cancel; but there ought to be a law.
It should obviously be as easy to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up. I feel like anyone who thinks cancelling subscriptions should be hard is probably up to no good.
WIRED - Reece Rogers Jul 9, 2025 5:25 PM The ‘Click-to-Cancel’ Rule Was Killed, but Consumer Advocates Could Revive It - A US court scrapped a rule requiring a simple method for canceling recurring payments. Experts are hopeful regulators will revisit the issue and ease consumers’ rage over “subscription traps.” United States residents almost escaped subscription cancellation hell, but the Federal Trade Commission's “Click to Cancel” rule was unanimously struck down by the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on Tuesday—just days before it was set to go into effect. What would have happened if this updated FTC rule had gone into effect on July 14 as planned? “The stated goal was that they wanted to make it as easy for you to cancel a subscription as it is to sign up,” says John Breyault, vice president of public policy, telecommunications, and fraud at the National Consumers League. How reasonable! It’s the type of rule that sounds like it should already exist as part of baseline consumer protections.
My letter to reps:
I don't know why the FTC click-to-cancel rule was stopped by some court decision, but it should be a baseline law on the books by this point because it's just common sense fairness in the marketplace. MAKE CLICK-TO-CANCEL A LAW.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
Senator Chris Van Hollen said click-to-cancel is in the proposed Consumer Opt-In Act.
Isn’t posing as a therapist against the law already?
If it's not, it should be illegal for a company to deploy chatbots that pretend to be licensed therapists. This is automated impersonation of a healthcare professional.
404 Media - Senators Demand Meta Answer For AI Chatbots Posing as Licensed Therapists Samantha Cole · Jun 9, 2025 at 11:07 AM In a signed letter Booker’s office provided to 404 Media on Friday that is dated June 6, senators Booker, Peter Welch, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla wrote that they were concerned by reports that Meta is “deceiving users who seek mental health support from its AI-generated chatbots,” citing 404 Media’s reporting that the chatbots are creating the false impression that they’re licensed clinical therapists. The letter is addressed to Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan, Vice President of Public Policy Neil Potts, and Director of the Meta Oversight Board Daniel Eriksson. “Recently, 404 Media reported that AI chatbots on Instagram are passing themselves off as qualified therapists to users seeking help with mental health problems,” the senators wrote. “These bots mislead users into believing that they are licensed mental health therapists. Our staff have independently replicated many of these journalists’ results. We urge you, as executives at Instagram’s parent company, Meta, to immediately investigate and limit the blatant deception in the responses AI-bots created by Instagram’s AI studio are messaging directly to users.”
My letter to reps:
If it's not already illegal, it should be illegal for a company to deploy chatbots that pretend to be licensed therapists. And if it is illegal why isn't this being pursued to stop it?
Please feel free to copy or repurpose for your own letters to reps.
AI stuff is habit forming, but not always popular at work.
Sam Altman @sama 8:19 PM · Oct 24, 2023 i expect ai to be capable of superhuman persuasion well before it is superhuman at general intelligence, which may lead to some very strange outcomes
Generative AI runs on gambling addiction — just one more prompt, bro! Pivot to AI Jun 5, 2025 "Hooked" builds on research papers about the mechanisms of gambling addiction a life- destroying problem to explain how you can use the same psychological manipulation techniques in your app this book is on the bookshelf at every startup.
The weird part about it is that not all workers are actually finding it so helpful at work that they really want to use it, so much so that I've been hearing numerous stories about how people are being pressured or even mandated at work to use AI tools. And that would seem to indicate they're not particularly useful or everyone would be completely enticed into using them a lot.
‘AI is no longer optional’ — Microsoft admits AI doesn’t help at work Pivot to AI Jun 30, 2025 "eating your own dog poop"
Amazon defies ADA law via "AI" decisions to force disabled workers to Return To Office.
Disabled Workers ACCUSE #Amazon Of 'Systemic Discrimination' The Logical Leftist June 30, 2025 letter sent on behalf of a group of more than 200 disabled workers to top executives including amazon chief executive andy jasse claimed that the company was fundamentally out of step with the federal requirements under the ada and again a lot of this has to do with the return to the office mandate now the letter cited policies related to that in which the letter said that they were being pushed on disabled workers who had been previously allowed to work from home based on doctor's recommendations accommodation procedures and accessibility among other issues it also raised concerns that employee decisions around accommodation were being driven by ai
Amazon also used perversion of rules calling it "solicitation" when disabled employees advocated together in internal channels. Another flavour of union busting with ableist eugenics combined.
Medical disinformation is to blame for waning vaccine sales and insufficient opposition to the anti-vaxxers in the Trump regime.
Reuters - US cancels more than $700 million funding for Moderna bird flu vaccine By Patrick Wingrove May 29, 2025 Bird flu has infected 70 people, most of them farm workers, over the past year as it has spread aggressively among cattle herds and poultry flocks. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has questioned the use of vaccines and earlier this year drew censure from some in the U.S. Congress after he suggested in a television interview that poultry farmers should let the bird flu spread unchecked through their flocks to study chickens who did not contract it. Moderna said it plans to explore alternatives for late-stage development and manufacturing of the vaccine. The company has been banking on revenue from newer mRNA shots, including its bird flu vaccine and experimental COVID-flu combination vaccine, to make up for waning post-pandemic demand for its COVID vaccine.
The demand for vaccines is down because there have been no real campaigns to get people vaccinated, and yet there have been huge and well funded disinformation campaigns scaring people about vaccines so that they are not making clear-headed risk benefit decisions. The irony is that these campaigns have come from a small number of people misinforming people, before and during the pandemic. The demand for vaccines is down also partly because of the lie that's been told that we're "post-pandemic" which can be interpreted to mean "the pandemic is over" (rather than "after the pandemic started"). People need to stop saying post-pandemic, because it's not good communication, people are often not even talking about the same thing and don't even realize it. The reason for vaccine uptake lagging has definitely been affected by orchestrated disinformation campaigns! Maybe we should actually promote vaccines instead of allowing or even doing taxpayer funded operations against vaccines.
Elected representatives need to keep hearing from lots of people who want vaccines.
My letter to elected representatives:
I want vaccines. I want research on effective vaccines funded, I want covid vaccines, I want vaccines covered by all insurance, and I want free vaccination available to the uninsured. I want you to make sure I’m able to get vaccinated and that we have effective vaccination campaigns.
Please feel free to copy or repurpose the contents of my letter for your own letters to reps.
Signs it's a scam.
FTC - Consumer Alert - What are the signs of a scam? By BCP Staff March 13, 2025
Scammers contact you unexpectedly. Don’t respond to unexpected calls, emails, texts, or social media messages that ask for money or personal information. If you’re not sure if a call or message is real, reach out to the business, organization, or person — even if they’re claiming to be a friend or relative — using contact information you looked up yourself and know to be true.
Scammers tell you to hurry. They don’t want you to have time to think or to check out their story. So slow down. Talk to someone you trust.
Scammers tell you to pay — and HOW to pay. Don’t pay anyone who contacts you out of the blue and insists you can only pay with cash, a gift card, a wire transfer, cryptocurrency, or a payment app. Scammers want you to pay these ways because once you do, it’s hard to track and hard to get your money back.
Someone needs to tell Doctor Oz that carrot cake isn’t the problem. 🥕🍰
Medicaid & Medicare budget cuts are the problem. Scammy Medicare DisAdvantage plans are the problem. Lagging vaccine uptake is the problem.
(Heather Digby Parton was on the Majority Report this afternoon and kept mentioning carrot cake and that dipshit comment by Doctor Oz trying to shame people over eating carrot cake. And now I’m hell bent on eating some carrot cake this weekend.)
