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Arizona accuses Amazon of being a monopoly and deceiving consumers with “dark patterns” (www.theverge.com)

submitted 7 months ago by ForgottenFlux to c/technology

25 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

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[–] dogslayeggs 27 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Ah, so dark as in evil, not dark as in low light. I hadn't heard of that, but going through the darkpatterns.org website is basically a laundry list of shit I hate.

[–] NOT_RICK 29 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah it’s a catch all term for psychologically manipulative UI/UX

[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I like how UX emerged as a dedicated field and profession in my time and then was shortly thereafter used for evil.

[–] thedirtyknapkin 8 points 7 months ago

think that's kind of the fate of all new things in today's world. if it can be used unscrupulously for money, someone will be doing that for tremendous profit. especially since new stuff usually isn't illegal, Even if it should be.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

I thought it was dark as in manipulation that isn't readily visible. For instance, a micro-transaction for a character reskin accompanied by default skins being crap. In Watchdogs Legion all the Londoners you could recruit generally had poor fashion, then money was scant and clothes were super expensive (but you could by more money with micro-transctions).

In one of the Space Quest series, as a joke (black humor in theme with the series) whenever an airlock interface was opened, the mouse cursor started on the Open Outer Door button, so an accidental double-tap was deadly, so dark patterns were known about in the 1990s, though not yet given a name.

Click-wrapped TOS and contracts for software and services were one such strategem, though we're more aware of it today, and more judges are willing to reject contracts and TOS that didn't include a clear, announced disclosure of their odious terms.