ExitFriction

Counts the clicks a cancellation flow actually makes you take, and flags every retention trick along the way.

Date: 2026-09-28 Form factor: Browser extension (Manifest V3) Browser surface: toolbar popup, on-demand content script (via activeTab + scripting), chrome.storage Status: Prototype

What it is

ExitFriction sits in the toolbar while you cancel something. On every page of the flow — the account settings screen, the retention modal, the "are you sure" pop-up, whatever comes next — you click Log this step, and it scans that page for the specific moves that make cancellation harder than sign-up: buried cancel links, "wait, before you go" offers, pre-checked "keep my plan" boxes, guilt-trip copy, countdown timers, and pages that tell you cancellation requires a phone call. Each flag adds points to a running friction score. At the end, you export a plain-text log of exactly what you clicked through and what was flagged at each step.

Why it has to be an extension

The dark patterns ExitFriction looks for live in the rendered page: text size, checkbox state, modal copy, computed styles. None of that is visible to anything outside the tab, and a cancellation flow usually spans several pages on a domain you don't control, so there's no API to query it from the outside. Reading it means running inside the tab, scanning the live DOM with the actual computed font sizes and checked states, right as you click through — which is what a content script does and a website cannot.

Who it serves

Anyone in the middle of canceling a subscription, membership, or trial who wants a record of what the company made them do to leave — not a general phone-and-fine-print advice article, but a log built from the specific flow they just sat through. It's most useful the moment a cancellation goes sideways: a hidden link, a surprise "call us" screen, a checkbox that was checked before you read it.

Why it could be profitable

Free tier: everything in this prototype — manual, step-by-step tracking and a plain-text export. Paid tier ($3–4/month): automatic tracking that follows you through the flow without a click per page, a saved history across every service you've canceled, and a formatted complaint packet pre-filled with the logged evidence and citations. A second, likely steadier line is B2B — consumer-rights clinics and plaintiffs' firms already build cancellation-friction cases one flow at a time; a tool that logs the flow as evidence while it happens is worth more to them than a screenshot taken after the fact.

The regulatory backdrop is current and moving: Adobe settled with the DOJ and FTC for $150 million in March 2026 over exactly this pattern — hidden termination fees and a cancellation flow that took multiple steps and phone calls to complete. The FTC's 2024 click-to-cancel rule was vacated on procedural grounds in 2025, but the agency opened an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in March 2026 to revive it, and it's still bringing cases under Section 5 of the FTC Act in the meantime. What's untested is whether an individual user cancelling one subscription will pay for a tracker rather than just calling their bank for a chargeback — the demand case here rests on the B2B and complaint-evidence angle more than on casual consumer use.

How to load it in Chrome

1. Open chrome://extensions and turn on Developer mode.
2. Click Load unpacked and select this folder's extension/ directory.
3. Visit a subscription's cancellation flow, click the ExitFriction icon, and click Log this step on each page as you go. (This prototype ships without a custom icon, so Chrome shows its default puzzle-piece badge for the toolbar button.)

How to try the demo

1. Open index.html directly in a browser — the mock flow's data is also embedded inline in the page, so it works straight from file:// with no server.
2. Click the ExitFriction icon in the mock toolbar to open the popup.
3. On each mock page, click Log this step in the popup first, then click the flow's own exit link (e.g. "Cancel Membership," "No thanks, continue canceling") to move to the next page.

The demo simulates content.js's DOM scan with pre-computed findings for each mock step, since there's no live tab for chrome.scripting to inject into — the popup's scoring, step log, and export logic is the same extension/popup.js that ships in the real extension.

Permissions, and why each one

There's no host_permissions entry and no <all_urls>. ExitFriction never touches a page until you click Log this step on it.

What's in this prototype

• Six detection heuristics: retention offers, guilt-trip language, phone-only cancellation, pre-checked retention checkboxes, de-emphasized ("buried") cancel links, and countdown/urgency timers.
• A running friction score with three risk bands (clean, low/moderate friction, high friction) shown live as you log steps.
• On-page outlining and labels pointing at each flag, in the real extension.
• A plain-text evidence export listing every step, every flag, and the total score, with a paragraph citing the relevant FTC rule and precedent.
• A five-step demo flow (StreamFlix mock cancellation) with all six pattern types planted across it.

Roadmap

• Automatic tracking as you navigate, instead of one click per page
• Saved history across every service you've tried to cancel
• A formatted, ready-to-file complaint packet for the paid tier
• A shared, anonymized pattern library built from real flows instead of a hand-written heuristic set
• A Firefox-compatible build

Sources

• Jones Day: FTC Revives Click-to-Cancel Rule — New Risks for Subscription Businesses — the rule's 2025 vacatur and the March 2026 rulemaking to revive it
• Bloomberg: Adobe Subscription Cancellation Lawsuit Settled for $150 Million — the settlement this README cites as precedent
• MLex: Adobe settles US FTC's hard-to-cancel subscription case for $150 million — case background on the obscured fees and multi-step cancellation flow