From a post on niemanlab.org by Sarah Scire headlined “The end of ‘click to subscribe, call to cancel’? One of the news industry’s favorite retention tactics is illegal, FTC says”:

Discovering they had to get on the phone to cancel a subscription they signed up for online rankled respondents in our survey looking at why people canceled their news subscriptions. The reaction to the call-to-cancel policy ranged from “an annoyance” and “ridiculous” to “shady” and “oppressive.”

Publishers tend to think of this as “retention.” A study of 526 news organizations found that only 41% make it easy for people to cancel subscriptions online, and more than half trained customer service reps in tactics to dissuade customers who call to unsubscribe.