Insights

On October 16, 2024, over 18 months after first issuing its proposed rule, the Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) issued a final rule to make it easier for consumers to cancel their subscriptions, memberships, automatic renewals, and other recurring payment options.  This rule reaches consumers and businesses in all sorts of industries: from gym memberships to e-commerce and delivery app subscriptions, internet services, cable, cell phone, and broadband and streaming services, gift box services, and even spa memberships, the examples abound. The purpose behind the rule is to increase transparency and make it easier for consumers to cancel subscriptions, saving them time and money by ending the “doom loop” some may find themselves in when trying to cancel such a feature.

On Sunday, September 29, 2024, California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 1047, a bill to enact the Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act. Although the bill passed the California Assembly and Senate, it generated significant controversy and debate within the tech community. The Center for AI Safety, Elon Musk, the L.A. Times editorial board, and San Francisco-based AI startup Anthropic all supported the bill; while Meta, OpenAI, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi opposed it as hindering innovation.

After conducting an investigation targeted at nine popular social media and video streaming companies, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC or Commission) released a Staff Report examining their data practices, including those relating to minors.  The FTC based its report on responses to questions it compelled under Section 6(b) (which enables the Commission to require an entity to file reports or answers in writing to specific questions) from Amazon.com, Inc. (which owns the gaming platform Twitch), Facebook, Inc. (now Meta Platforms, Inc.), YouTube LLC, Twitter, Inc. (now X Corp.), Snap Inc., ByteDance Ltd. (which owns the video-sharing platform TikTok), Discord Inc., Reddit, Inc., and WhatsApp Inc.