We’ve all been there before. You’re trying to cancel a subscription you totally forgot about, but when you go to hit the “cancel” button—assuming you can even find a “cancel” button—all these different prompts and questions come across your screen, like a miserable digital obstacle course. By pop-up number 27, you’re ready to toss your phone across the room, wondering if it’s easier to just move to a cave and forsake modern life altogether.
Well, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is apparently also fed up with the dark patterns of canceling subscriptions. On Tuesday, he signed into law Assembly Bill 2863, which sets up safeguards on subscription contracts enacted after July 1, 2025. There’s still time to go before Californians are safe from those frustrating tactics, but perhaps this move will set a precedent for other states.
The law tightens regulations on automatic renewals and continuous service offers in a few ways. It requires businesses to get clear consent from consumers about subscriptions and give timely notices about renewals and fee changes. The law also mandates annual reminders about subscriptions and sets rules for free trials that convert to paid services. All this pesky crap to dodge before actually hitting the cancel button for the final time will also be throttled with this bill.
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Robert Herrell, executive director of the Consumer Federation of California, told the Los Angeles Times that people have “had it with rampant automatic subscriptions where it is close to impossible to put a stop to something a consumer no longer wants.” He called the bill “the most comprehensive law in the nation” regarding subscriptions, including gym memberships and wine club membership, among other things.
There’s nothing worse than never using your gym card because the thought of going to work out is just too much—then realizing you need to actually go to the gym to tell them you’re canceling.
The recently passed bill isn’t the same as the “Click to Cancel” rule that the Federal Trade Commission has been pursuing since 2023, but it covers the same bases. Again, this is a good step for everyone across the nation in setting up safeguards for all within the country because we can all agree on one thing: no one wants to jump through infinite hoops to cancel a $5.99 subscription.
