Jun 29, 2026
Roku: a TV that tracks what you watch, then sells you ads
Roku's TVs collect what you watch for targeted ads, and Roku tested video ads that play before you can reach the home screen.
Whoop: a fitness wristband that stops delivering your data if you stop paying
Whoop sells a fitness wearable that's useless without an ongoing membership, so the device is really a subscription with a strap attached. Stop paying and the band won't sync, so none of its tracking reaches you.
Published Jun 22, 2026
What happened
Whoop, Inc. is a wearable technology company that sells health tracking wristbands. The band is designed to be useless when there is no active subscription, which consumerrights.wiki describes as a form of self-destructive design.
Whoop offers a limited set of information in the web experience, forcing the user to use the mobile app in order to get full access to features they paid for.
Cancelling runs about 11 pages and 15 minutes, per consumerrights.wiki as of March 2026, through retention offers, a pause-membership prompt, and a required survey. The wiki notes the FTC's click-to-cancel rule requires cancellation to be as easy as signup. There's no button to remove a payment method, only to update one, and updating triggers a $1 verification charge, leaving the user with no assurance that their payment method won't be charged.
FULU's takeaway
Locking core functionalities behind a recurring fee, then making it difficult to cancel or remove payment methods, turns a purchase into a trap.
Why this is a law problem
Most of these entries involve a digital lock guarding copyrighted software, and a lock like that sits under Section 1201 of the DMCA, 17 U.S.C. 1201. Subsection 1201(a)(1) makes it unlawful to bypass a lock that controls access to a copyrighted work, even when no copyright is infringed. Subsections 1201(a)(2) and 1201(b)(1) separately ban making or distributing the tools that do the bypassing.
Every three years the Librarian of Congress can exempt narrow classes of uses from the first ban. An exemption expires after three years and has to be re-argued, and the rulemaking has no authority over the tool bans, so a granted exemption still leaves no lawful supplier for the means to use it. FULU exists to reform or revoke this statute.
If you want this law changed, donations fund the work. FULU is a 501(c)(4). Donations to FULU are not tax-deductible, which is the tradeoff for being able to lobby without a limit.
Nothing on these pages says any company named here violated Section 1201. FULU is not a law firm, and this is not legal advice.
The original post
The slides below are the originals as posted. Where a slide and the text on this page disagree, go by the text; the text is the corrected, sourced record. Some slides also print an old wiki address that no longer works. The links on this page are current.
The first slide prices the band at $200. No source in this entry supports a price, so the text carries none.
Originally published as an Instagram carousel on Jun 22, 2026: See Instagram post.
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