Is this the same AOL that still gets a good chunk of money each year from people that never cancelled their 56k internet subscription when they got ADSL?
It's not that they're "leaving it up to its customers to be responsible", it's strategically employing black patterns to exploit specific mistakes people make.
Are you 100% on top of your every bill? Do you know everything going in and going out of your bank account? Have you made any mistakes in looking over something? My friend's dad is a CFO of a Fortune 500 company (and is a generally well-reputed guy) - I recently found out that he's pretty bad at managing his home finances - forgets to pay credit bills and all that.
This shit just happens. I'd rather that I deal with a company that doesn't try to actively exploit me on my weaknesses. The companies that do this have a bad character and I wish they just didn't exist.
If I wasn't, I sure wouldn't blame anyone but myself for it. I wouldn't blame the company I willingly gave money to due to my own oversight. And I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't call me and ask me to stop paying them.
If the customers are actively paying for a service that AOL is providing, despite not needing that service anymore, AOL has an obligation to mention that to them. Otherwise AOL is exploiting the technological ignorance of their own customers, which is immoral.
If AOL's logs show that a customer hasn't used their service in more than a year, it would be trivial to send out a 'are you sure you still need us?' letter to each of them.
I think he was just using that as one example of AOL's questionable business practices. The company has been known for things like charging customers for service they don't need, making it difficult to cancel service, and pumping out a large volume of low quality content (pulled from original sources) to get higher search rankings.
I think AOL is one large moral-free zone.