The Enrollment

The Selective Service System recently announced that it would stop requiring men to register.

Instead, it will enroll them automatically.

The change is described as a "streamlining" of the process. Men between the ages of 18 and 25 are now enrolled in the Selective Service when they register for federal student loans, apply for federal employment, get certain federal licenses, or engage with various other government programs that ask for their name, address, and date of birth.

You filled out a form for something else. The form enrolled you in the draft. This is what "automatic enrollment" means.

(You may recognize "automatic enrollment" from your streaming service, your gym membership, your airline loyalty program, or your bank's optional overdraft protection. The term refers to a design pattern where the default state is "signed up" rather than "not signed up." The presumption is that users want the product. The users find out they have it when they try to cancel it. In the case of the Selective Service, the cancellation process is somewhat more involved.)

The technology companies who developed automatic enrollment described its purpose as "reducing friction." Friction, in this context, is the step where someone has to decide they want something before they get it. Reducing friction means skipping that step. The government has concluded that the step where an 18-year-old decides whether to register for the military draft is the kind of friction that could be eliminated.

They are probably right that it was creating friction. The previous registration system required a deliberate act. The new system does not require an act at all. It requires that you attended college or drove a car.

To be clear: the Selective Service does not currently draft anyone. The last draft was in 1973. Automatic enrollment means you are registered for a draft that has not existed for fifty years. You are enrolled in a system that, if activated, would mean the government could require you to serve in the military. No one is claiming this will happen. The Selective Service has also not claimed it will not happen. The enrollment is precautionary.

(The word "precautionary" is doing a great deal of work in that sentence. A spare key hidden outside your house is precautionary. A fire extinguisher in the kitchen is precautionary. Automatic enrollment in a military draft registration system is a somewhat more specific precaution. It is precautionary in the way that life insurance is precautionary. You hope to get nothing from it. The framing requires you not to think too hard about what it is for.)

Netflix's automatic enrollment procedure requires you to enter a credit card number and click "I agree." The Selective Service's automatic enrollment procedure requires that you have previously applied for a federal student loan.

The difference, in user experience terms, is that Netflix's process is called "signing up" and the Selective Service's process is called "streamlining."

The solution, presumably, would be to inform people that this has happened. A notification. A confirmation email. Something like: "Thank you for registering your vehicle. You have also been enrolled in the Selective Service System. For more information, visit sss.gov. To unsubscribe from this service, you may apply for an exemption at your local Selective Service office. Processing time is four to six weeks."

No such email is sent.

The enrollment is silent. The receipt is the system. You know you are enrolled when you apply for federal aid and see the box that says "confirmed." The box does not explain what you confirmed. That part is in the footnotes, which are available at sss.gov.

Presumably no one at the Selective Service thought of this as borrowing a design pattern from software companies. Presumably they simply decided that automatic enrollment was more efficient than voluntary enrollment, for the same reasons software companies decided this: it produces more enrollees. The mechanism is identical. The product is different.

The gym that enrolls you automatically and the government that enrolls you automatically have reached the same conclusion about how humans should be processed.

One of them is asking for your credit card.