The Federal Trade Commission is set to take Amazon to court over claims it illegally tricked millions of people into signing up for its Prime service and made it unnecessarily difficult to quit. The lawsuit, filed in 2023 under the Biden administration, will see prosecutors accuse Amazon of using design tricks known as “dark patterns” to coerce people into signing up for Prime without realizing what they were getting into. Once they were locked into a monthly subscription, the FTC claims, the tech giant made users go through a “labyrinth” process if they wanted to cancel their accounts, requiring customers to “navigate a four-page, six-click, fifteen-option cancellation process,” which included numerous warnings and off-ramps intended to sow confusion and derail the process. So confusing was the process that it was known internally as the “Iliad flow,” the FTC claims, referring to “Homer’s epic about the long, arduous Trojan War.” In contrast, the Jeff Bezos-founded Amazon made it possible to sign up for Prime in just two clicks, and allegedly buried info about recurring charges in the small print. Jury selection for the month-long trial begins on Monday, with prosecutors set to make their opening arguments this week. The FTC is also filing a separate lawsuit against Amazon, accusing it of anticompetitive practices and running afoul of antimonopoly laws.
Read it at The Verge
