Amazon already faces a major antitrust challenge from the FTC.

  • Arizona’s Attorney General, Kris Mayes, filed two lawsuits against Amazon on Wednesday for allegedly engaging in deceptive business practices and maintaining monopoly status. The first lawsuit accuses the company of using dark patterns to keep users from canceling their Amazon Prime subscriptions, violating Arizona’s Consumer Fraud Act. This is similar to a complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) against Amazon in June.

  • The second lawsuit alleges that Amazon unfairly maintains its monopoly status through agreements with third-party sellers that restrict them from offering lower prices off of the platform than they do on Amazon, violating Arizona’s Uniform State Antitrust Act. This practice has also been targeted by other state attorneys general in cases filed against Amazon.

  • Additionally, the lawsuit accuses Amazon’s Buy Box algorithm of being biased towards first-party retail offers or sellers who participate in Fulfillment By Amazon, leading consumers to overpay for items that are available at lower prices from other sellers on Amazon. This aspect is also reflected in the FTC’s recent antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, which has been joined by more than a dozen state attorneys general.

  • Arizona seeks to stop Amazon from engaging in these allegedly deceptive and anticompetitive practices and award civil penalties and disgorgement of ill-gotten gains.

    • ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.worldEnglish
      171·
      7 months ago

      It really should be fraud. It is deception used for personal gain. While I think it should be fraud, it will probably need new legislation to make it so.

  • Vertelleus@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    20·
    7 months ago

    The result will be Amazon gets a baby fine and shrugs it off as the cost of doing business.

    Without fines being proportional to the business annual income nothing will be accomplished.

  • Konala Koala@lemmy.worldEnglish
    6·
    7 months ago

    And now probably can’t wait until someone accuses Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Twiiter/X, Reddit, etc., of similar anti-trust monopoly practices and give the fediverse the appearance of the only option to switch to.

  • cmrn@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    7 months ago

    I didn’t read a single thing beyond the title but… yeah that checks out

  • dogslayeggs@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1916·
    7 months ago

    I hate Amazon probably more than most people in the world and have been boycotting them since roughly 1999, but… “dark patterns???”

    EDIT: TIL a new term, and it refers to something I have hated for years.

      • brbposting@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        4·
        7 months ago

        I like how Facebook intentionally delays spam reports made via Messenger on desktop. That’s after clicking through excessive prompts (which are more understandable due to the general public’s abuse of reporting features).

    • Grangle1@lemm.eeEnglish
      14·
      7 months ago

      The term “dark pattern” refers to any deceptive practice, no matter how small or insignificant it may seem, that online websites, apps, etc use to get people to do the site/app’s desired behavior, such as in this case, not cancel their Prime subscription. Not all of these examples may apply in Amazon’s case, but some examples would be making the fields or buttons for canceling or keeping your subscriptions different colors or sizes, making the default choice to keep the subscription, making you view a bunch of ads to keep the sub or go through a bunch of other pages before canceling, or hiding the cancelation option in fine print in a corner of the site. The “dark” part means that the average person usually doesn’t notice the deceptive nature of the practices.

    • eleitl@lemmy.mlEnglish
      92·
      7 months ago

      If you haven’t noticed, you’ve been not paying attention. I canceled Prime a while ago and they try very hard to get you back. And they try to sneak on you billed expedited shipping when over minimum gratis shipping quota. Dark patterns galore.

      It would be a major pain for me to boycott them completely so I don’t, yet.

        • eleitl@lemmy.mlEnglish
          3·
          7 months ago

          Ok, if you don’t use their web site you won’t see the UX dark patterns. Trust us, they there and fit with the overall garbagefication theme. Annoys the living shit out of me. At least no more Prime Video UI and ad trainwreck.

  • Corr@lemm.eeEnglish
    52·
    7 months ago

    I don’t mean to support amazon in this, but the article outlines them promoting their own products over others? Unless the buy box implies something other than “we would like you to buy this”, I dont really understand the issue with that particular point