Questions,
answered straight.

A collective. You tell us which subscriptions you're on and the point at which you'd rather walk than keep paying. When a service crosses that line, we help everyone who drew it walk at the same time: one visible, countable bloc instead of a scattering of individuals nobody notices.

It's what happens to a service once it has you locked in: the screws tighten. Prices creep up, quality slides, the features you liked move behind a higher tier. Not because the product got more expensive to run, but because squeezing extra profit out of people who won't leave is easier than earning it. They're betting the hassle of leaving is worth more to you than the thing itself. The word was coined by writer Cory Doctorow. The pattern is older than the word. More on this.

Look, these are just my opinions, man. Reasonable people can disagree, and every one of these companies would tell you a nicer story. But:

• Netflix spent years telling you "love is sharing a password," then in 2023 banned exactly that, bolted on an ads tier, quietly retired its cheapest ad-free plan to herd everyone onto pricier ones, and has pushed prices up again and again. Same catalog, thinner wallet.
• Reddit was built for free by its users and their volunteer moderators, then in 2023 jacked up its API prices overnight, killing beloved apps like Apollo and setting off a site-wide blackout, timed neatly for its IPO. The community did the work; the payday went to someone else.
• Imgur, once the scrappy image host half the internet ran on, sacrificed the community that built it for a quick payday: it piled on sketchy, low-rent ads, coasted on little real investment, and announced a purge of years of old and anonymous uploads, all while capricious AI moderation nukes posts and accounts with no rhyme or reason.

See the shape? Each one reeled you in while it was still winning you over, then turned the screws once walking away felt like too much trouble. You paid the same or more, and quietly got less.

You can, and you should if a service isn't worth it. But your single cancellation doesn't change anyone's behavior. It's a rounding error in a quarterly report. A company only changes course when the churn is big enough and sudden enough to show up on a chart. That takes coordination. That's the entire reason we exist.

The trigger you set: the condition that means you're out. To start, that's a price increase past a threshold you choose, say, "more than 10% in a year." Don't want to babysit it? Pick "let OurTerms decide," and we'll apply a sensible default line for that service on your behalf.

For now, yes, and on purpose. A price hike is objective: the number went up, by this much, on this date, and nobody can argue it away. Most of what makes a service worse is fuzzier and more subjective, and I wanted to start with something clean, simple, and unambiguous.

If this grows, it gets richer: more vendors, more kinds of red lines, and community votes on the judgment calls, like whether some specific change actually counts as crossing the line. This is the beginning, not the finished shape of the thing.

So do we. There's a long list of services we'd like to add, and a longer list of triggers beyond price, like "gets acquired by EvilCorp," or a feature you pay for quietly getting gutted. It's on the roadmap. We can't promise every one, but we genuinely want to hear which ones matter to you, so send your thoughts to [email protected].

We notify you first. No surprises. Then, depending on what you chose: either you cancel or downgrade yourself and tell us you held the line, or, if you authorized us to act, we submit a cancellation request to the service as your disclosed agent, timed to land alongside everyone else's in the bloc. We also publish the numbers: how many walked, and how the service responded.

A dose of realism on timing. Everyone's on a different subscription with a different billing cycle, so this is never one dramatic switch flipping off at once. Some people will cancel on the spot; most probably won't, and even a cancellation usually doesn't take effect until the end of your current billing period, which could be days, weeks, or even months away. But the part that matters lands right away: the vendor sees the decision the moment it's made. A wave of cancellations shows up on their side immediately, long before the last subscription actually lapses.

No law requires a company to accept a cancellation submitted by your agent. We fully expect many of them to refuse, stall, or bury it behind a phone tree and a "we couldn't verify your identity."

That's not a hole in the plan. It is the plan. A company that makes it this hard to leave is telling you exactly how much it values billing you over serving you. When a service stonewalls thousands of documented, authorized cancellations, that refusal becomes the story. And it's a story regulators and reporters happen to be very interested in right now.

So: we can't promise your subscription gets cancelled. What we can do is make sure you're not walking out alone, and that a company slamming the door on a crowd this size has to do it in public.

Here's the whole game plan, laid out: how their pushback is supposed to turn into change. Or not.

We understand. Nobody's saying give it up forever. Maybe you go a month without, for the greater good. Maybe you just drop to a cheaper tier and keep watching. Or maybe you go find some alternative that we here at OurTerms would adamantly, absolutely advise against (y'arrgh).

The whole thing only works if they believe the bloc will act. So: will you?

Your call, and you pick it when you sign up:

• Let OurTerms do it (the default). You appoint us as your limited agent for the services you list, to cancel, downgrade, or reverse a request on your behalf when your red line is crossed.
• Do it yourself. You pledge to cancel or downgrade with your own hands when the bloc moves, and hold the line with everyone else.

Either way you can revoke anytime, per service or entirely, in one click. Hard limits we hold ourselves to: we never log in as you, never use your password (because we'll never ask for it), never touch the service's systems, and never claim to be you. We identify ourselves as your agent, openly.

No. OurTerms is not a law firm and nothing we say or send is legal advice. If you've authorized us to, we act as your authorized agent to pass along a cancellation you're entitled to make yourself. If you haven't, you're the one acting and we're just here for the bloc. Either way, if you need advice about your rights, talk to a lawyer.

As little as does the job: your email, the services you list, the red lines you set, and your signed authorization or pledge (which, being an electronic signature, records a timestamp and the IP you signed from, that's what makes it valid). We don't want your streaming passwords and will never ask for them.

It's encrypted, served over HTTPS only, and you can turn on authenticator 2FA if you want the extra lock (optional). And if you ever delete your account, everything goes with it, wiped like you were never here.

No. Never have, never will. There are no ads and no data brokers in this. The entire premise is that we sit on your side of the table, not theirs. Your data pays for nothing here.

Also, frankly, we don't have much data on you in the first place. That's by design, too. We value your privacy in a way they don't.

No. Not on a stock market, not on a "prediction market," not anywhere. No way, no how. We don't wager on you, and we don't sell anyone else the chance to.

Better still: you don't have to wait for it. The collective's numbers are already public, in real time, on the Red Lines page: the same board for everyone. There's no secret position to take when the whole thing is out in the open.

Anytime, immediately, one click, for a single service or your whole account. Revoking stops us acting on your behalf from that moment on. Delete the account and every trace of you is erased, like you were never here.

Yes. (For now, anyway.) And here's the part worth reading twice: we won't so much as ask for your credit card until the collective passes 100,000 members. Which means you'll get to see whether this actually works before you're ever on the hook for a cent, and you can walk before paying anything. After 100k users, when we have some teeth, it'll probably be $5 a year, or $50 once for life. But we hope you'll stick around, comrade.

I'm fed up. That's the honest answer. Same auto-renewals, same creeping prices, same "your call is important to us," same feeling of being quietly milked because leaving is a pain. I'd rather build the thing that pushes back than keep paying and grumbling. If it grows, $5 a year down the line keeps the lights on, and maybe lets us grow and take on more. It was never going to make anyone rich.

Sure, buddy. You can reach me at [email protected].