FTC box on Amazon takes premium memberships are at the trial: NPR

Amazon and the US government face a Seattle on Prime audience room, the company’s lucrative subscription service. The government alleges that the company has “encouraged” people to pay the privileged memberships that have been deliberately difficult to cancel.

The trial marks one of the largest federal cases which pursue one of the largest companies in the world. A little unusual for a dense antitrust case, a jury will determine if Amazon has broken the law. The oral arguments are expected to start on Tuesday in the trial which should last almost a month.

The Federal Trade Commission accused Amazon of raping consumer protection laws and competition in the way it has made people register at a bonus, the subscription service which costs $ 139 per year or $ 14.99 per month. Amazon denies any reprehensible act.

In 2021, the company said that more than 200 million people worldwide have subscribed to a bonus. It was the last time that he publicly disclosed membership figures.

This main case is a prelude to the second trial of the FTC which accused Amazon of operating as a monopoly. Amazon said that this prosecution was “wrong about the facts and on the law”. This trial was scheduled for the beginning of 2027, before the same judge, John Chun of the American district court for the western district of Washington.

The government says that Amazon knew it trapped people

The FTC alleges that millions of people have registered in bonus involuntarily thanks to the use by Amazon of what are called dark models, which the trial describes as “manipulative design elements which inform users to make decisions that they would not have taken otherwise”.

An example of the regulators offered showed a large yellow button “get a free two -day delivery” as a quick way to register without too much details on recurring membership costs, while a small blue hyperlink “No thanks, I do not want fast delivery, free” would avoid registering for bonus.

This example of the Amazon website is one of the exhibitions of the US government trial against Amazon. The government alleges that the company has “deceived” people thanks to deceptive web conceptions to register for bonus. Amazon denies it.

The complaint of the FTC against Amazon / screenshot by NPR

hide

tilting legend

The complaint of the FTC against Amazon / screenshot by NPR

And at the other end, the FTC describes a trip “four pages, six clicks and fifteen options” to cancel a main membership, which it alleges the employees of Amazon called internally the “Flow Iliad”, referring to the ancient Greek poem on the long and arduous and the war of the Trojan trans.

“Millions of consumers have accidentally signed up for premium without knowledge or consent,” said the FTC in its test memory, “but Amazon refused to solve this known problem, described internally by employees as” tacit cancer “because clarity adjustments would cause a drop in subscribers”.

Amazon says that it acts like other subscription services

Amazon maintains that its main members are driven by the advantages of the program, not design tips. He says that his conceptions and disclosure are in conformity – or even clearer than – the rest of the subscription industry.

“The frustrations and occasional errors of customers are inevitable – in particular for a program as popular as Amazon Prime,” said the company’s test file. “The evidence that a small percentage of customers does not include registration or cancellation does not prove that Amazon violated the law.”

Amazon says that the law does not define the term “dark diagrams” and that the FTC tries to apply a large law against fraud by interpretation. Andrea Matwyshyn, professor of law at the Pennsylvania State University, who has advised the FTC in the past, said that the law is intentionally wide to give regulators the room for maneuver for the latest technologies or business practices.

“The question is when design crosses the line in a situation where a reasonable consumer is not good to understand what is going on,” says Matwyshyn.

Amazon also defends three of its leaders who have been personally appointed in the FTC trial as individuals alongside society as a whole.

The judge questions Amazon’s legal tactics

In July, judge Chun officially urged Amazon lawyers for some of their legal tactics in the trial.

The FTC accused Amazon of hiding incriminating evidence by marking deposits free of charge as privileged. After Amazon revised its privilege newspapers, the company withdrew almost all of its privilege complaints and produced nearly 70,000 documents at the FTC on the eve of the cut -off date for discovery.

The judge wrote that this conduct was “by equipping bad faith” and seemed motivated by “the
desire to gain a tactical advantage. “”

Judge Chun took the FTC’s side in several other procedural decisions; He also rejected Amazon’s request to reject the trial. The FTC survey on Amazon started during the first Trump administration. The agency did not file its trial before 2023, however, when it was under the supervision of Lina Khan, the nomarian of Firebrand Biden.

Amazon is an NPR financial supporter and pays to distribute part of our content.