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On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon, accusing it of duping people into signing up for Prime, then making it difficult for them to cancel subscriptions.
According to the lawsuit, Amazon is alleged to have used “manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs known as ‘dark patterns’ to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically-renewing Prime subscriptions.” The lawsuit defines the dark patterns as “manipulative design elements that trick users into making decisions they would not otherwise have made.”
Three company executives in particular were named in the lawsuit: Neil Lindsay, SVP of health services, Russell Grandinetti, SVP of international consumer, and Jamil Ghani, Prime’s VP. The trio, along with other leadership, allegedly “undid user experience changes that they knew would reduce Nonconsensual Enrollment because those changes would also negatively affect Amazon’s bottom line,” according to the suit.
“Fittingly, Amazon named that [cancellation] process ‘Iliad,’ which refers to Homer’s epic about the long, arduous Trojan War. Amazon designed the Iliad cancellation process (‘Iliad Flow’) to be labyrinthine,” the lawsuit alleges.
Amazon hit back against the lawsuit. “The FTC’s claims are false on the facts and the law. The truth is that customers love Prime, and by design we make it clear and simple for customers to both sign up for or cancel their Prime membership…We also find it concerning that the FTC announced this lawsuit without notice to us,” an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement that appeared in TechCrunch and multiple other news outlets (and that Amazon emailed to Marketing Brew).
FTC Chair Lina Khan has waged several battles against tech companies since assuming the role in 2021. Under Khan, the FTC filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft earlier this month over its plans to acquire gaming company Activision Blizzard for $69 billion. Last year, it sued Meta in an effort to block the company’s purchase of VR developer Within, though the acquisition ultimately went through and the FTC withdrew its complaint.
The agency has also increasingly scrutinized the digital advertising industry in recent years. In March, BetterHelp paid a $7.8 million fine for allegedly sharing its users’ sensitive health data for advertising purposes.