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Mission statement

From Consumer_Action_Taskforce

LOST AND LOOKING TO HELP? SEE: How to help

The mission of this Wiki is to document a new generation of consumer exploitation that bears no resemblance to issues of the 1950s-1990s. We focus on the issues that often go unnoticed by review sites, tech press, and traditional consumer protection publications.

Consumer protection has changed

What is "old" consumer protection?

30 years ago, consumer advocacy dealt with more visible problems:

  1. Unsafe products
  2. Misleading labels
  3. Materially false advertising
  4. Bait & switch pricing
  5. Not delivering goods after payment
  6. Lead in toys
  7. Discrimination

What is "new" consumer protection?

Today's consumers face different forms of exploitation that strike at the heart of what it means to own something, and are deliberately designed to be difficult to understand or resist. Above all, unlike the issues above, these issues are usually not even illegal.

Modern businesses have perfected the art of subtle control. They are able to:

  1. Remotely deactivate products you "own" via cloud services.
  2. Alter a purchased item into a significantly different version after the sale.
  3. Gather personal data without adequate disclosure and sell it without proper consent.
  4. Hinder service cancellation by designing systems where signing up is a single click, but canceling involves navigating a complex process of sending certified mail and enduring endless phone menus.
  5. Change the definitions of "purchase" and "own" deep within an end user license agreement, providing legal grounds to remove items you have "purchased" from your library.
  6. Intentionally create obstacles to repair, causing otherwise functional devices to become unusable.
  7. Coerce you into forced arbitration by sending an email and assuming that not responding signifies agreement to new terms of service.

"Old" style consumer protection covers exposing and pursuing companies that break existing laws. Modern consumer protection efforts exist and are distinct, because the consumer protection laws that currently exist are not fit for purpose. Companies are able to exploit legal loopholes, or legally dubious strategies which are not met with meaningful consequences, to trap their customers in unfavorable positions. They rely on complexity & fatigue to prevent resistance.

These abuses of the consumer have a common thread:

  • Take away the consumer's right to say "NO".
  • Take away the consumer's right of ownership.
  • Take away the consumer's right to privacy.

How we're taking action

This Wiki exists to document and expose these practices, making visible what companies work hard to keep obscure. By creating a centralized knowledge base of modern consumer exploitation tactics, we aim to help consumers understand how their rights are being systematically violated through technology, psychology, deliberately complex legal mechanisms, as well as the ineffective governmental bodies that allow it to happen.

Our goal is to bring clarity to these new practices that companies intentionally make opaque and to provide consumers with the information they need to recognize and fight back against new forms of exploitation.

How this Wiki will be used

It is expected that the Wiki will be contributed to by a wide variety of people, both technical and non-technical, who share a desire to see consumers be treated more fairly. It will enable this by being quick and easy to contribute to, with a low barrier to entry for contributors. This barrier to entry should be maintained at the minimum level necessary to combat spam and bad actors.

The base focus of the Wiki is expected to be on issues frequently discussed on Louis Rossmann’s channel, and those adjacent to the right-to-repair movement, though this may grow to a more all-encompassing definition of consumer protection over time. The minimum desired goal is to have a site that records, in a helpful and searchable format, the specific issues and topics that have been discussed on Louis’ channel over the years, with factual citations.

Ideally, it should aim to grow and act as a one-stop-shop, where a user can discover how the companies they buy products from are working against their interests behind the scenes, and what they can do about it. It should serve to highlight how consumer rights have been eroded over the years and give people the knowledge and tools to fight back against the tide. It will feature factual documentation relating to specific instances of consumer abuse, articles that track the consumer-protection-related activities of large companies and certain individuals, as well as articles and content which serve to educate users about the different forms of consumer abuse.

The Wiki will aim to be viewed as a legitimate source that, though not perfect, can generally be relied upon to provide accurate information, in a similar vein to other Wiki-projects. It is crucial for the Wiki to take steps to avoid causing harassment or financial harm to companies as a result of false or misleading information. It will enable this by attracting an excellent team of moderators, and giving them powerful and effective tools to combat spam and misinformation. If problems arise in this area, we will treat them with the utmost seriousness, as they may jeopardize the entire project.

In seeking this legitimacy, it is important that the appropriate tone is used. The exact tone that is appropriate for a given article will be defined in the Editorial Guidelines (along with the range of acceptable tones for the wiki as a whole) and will vary based on the type of article. In general, we will aim for professionalism. A project like this cannot obtain or maintain legitimacy if every article comes across as being written by someone with an axe to grind or by someone who is more interested in proving a point than the truth. Please see the Wiki Content Policies page for more guidance here, as well as the Editorial guidelines page.

The full, official, collection of CAT Wiki policies can be found here. This page can also be accessed via the sidebar.