By India McCarty
It looks like streamers won’t make it any easier to cancel your subscriptions — a federal appeals court just struck down an FTC rule that would’ve streamlined the process.
“[The court] struck down the FTC‘s ‘click to cancel’ rule, which would’ve required companies to provide users with simple cancellation mechanisms to immediately halt all recurring charges and get their consent to convert auto-renewals and free trials to paid enrollments,” The Hollywood Reporter explained.
Under this rule, businesses would not have been allowed to make it “more difficult to cancel than it is to sign up,” THR reported, adding that the rule was “intended to eliminate drawn-out cancellation processes aimed at trapping users in unwanted subscriptions.”
In addition to affecting streaming services, it also would have been implemented in business like gyms, which require memberships that can often be near-impossible to get out of.
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.” https://t.co/nsVbbZFBXP
— WIRED (@WIRED) July 9, 2025
THR conducted an experiment in 2023 to see which streaming services were hardest to cancel, finding that Amazon Prime was the most difficult. The outlet also noted that every streamer would offer alternate plans before letting a user cancel their subscription.
Related: Great News: It Just Got Much Easier to Cancel Your Subscriptions
The FTC was initially set to put the rule into effect July 14, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that the FTC failed to perform “a key procedural requirement in implementing the initiative” — a “preliminary analysis that includes an assessment of the effectiveness of the measure and alternatives to the proposal.”
“Excusing the Commission’s noncompliance with [the requirement] could open the door to future manipulation of the rulemaking process,” the court’s ruling, per Variety, explained. “While we certainly do not endorse the use of unfair and deceptive practices in negative option marketing, the procedural deficiencies of the Commission’s rulemaking process are fatal here.”
The FTC has not made an official statement concerning the overturn of this proposed rule, but Samuel Levine, who led the FTC’s consumer protection bureau last year when the rule was initially passed, told the Washington Post, “My hope is that the FTC continues the bipartisan work to make sure subscriptions are as easy to cancel as they are to enroll in.”
There’s no word yet on whether or not the FTC will continue to try to get this rule passed, but for many Americans, this measure would be a welcome change to the difficult process of canceling a subscription.
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