aprilthird2021 11 hours ago

None of the comments seem to mention that companies get to just cheat you out of your money and get bailed out when caught by Trump:

> That toxic cycle is now being sped up by a Trump administration that is defanging government watchdogs, consumer rights advocates say.

> In late 2023, Toyota Motor Credit, the finance arm of the carmaker, was ordered to pay $60m after dealers sold thousands of customers unwanted insurance products with their loans, and the lender made it nearly impossible for car buyers to remove them.

> A complaint hotline was staffed by employees instructed not to cancel the products until a consumer asked three times, and then to tell callers they needed to write a letter. The lender “directed customers to dead-end cancellation hotline, withheld refunds, and knowingly tarnished credit reports with false data,” the order by the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) found.

> Last May, the acting CFPB head, Russell Vought, terminated the payout agreement, part of sweeping changes that have gutted the agency, which was set up after the financial crisis to oversee financial firms and has returned $21bn to consumers.

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AnthonyMouse 11 hours ago | parent [-]

This is actually making the case for why agencies like the CFPB are a bad way to go about this. If that was a class action lawsuit instead, the plaintiff's lawyers aren't going to drop the case just because there was a change of administrations.

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BrenBarn 11 hours ago | parent [-]

It's more a case for why the US system of government is a failure.

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AnthonyMouse 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Which system of government is capable of operating at the scale of the US without going sideways? It's not the EU, look at what just happened with Chat Control.

Maybe the problem is attempting to regulate at that scale to begin with.

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janalsncm 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Chat control is not relevant to consumer protection, which is what the article is about.

Of course, Americans also have much worse privacy rights than Europeans do, Chat Control notwithstanding. GDPR gives Europeans the right to delete their personal data. In the US, data brokers routinely launder highly personal information about Americans and nothing is done. Good luck figuring out how to delete that.

	▲	AnthonyMouse 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Chat control is not relevant to consumer protection It's relevant to demonstrating a failed government, however. > Of course, Americans also have much worse privacy rights than Europeans do, Chat Control notwithstanding. Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? > Europeans the right to delete their personal data. In the US, data brokers routinely launder highly personal information about Americans and nothing is done. Good luck figuring out how to delete that. Good luck figuring out how to delete it from the databases of foreign companies even if you're in Europe. You think companies in China are complying with any of that when you have no way to prove whether they are or not? That's why the only thing that works is ensuring they don't have your data to begin with, i.e. E2EE. Trying to regulate what they do with it once the cat is is out of the bag is too late.

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janalsncm 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The US government is not a failure. It simply does not care about consumers. Those are two different things.

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1over137 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Perhaps it’s not the system, perhaps it’s the electorate.