Amazon will pay $2.5 billion to settle FTC claims it tricked customers into Prime and hid the cancel button. The settlement includes roughly $1 billion in civil penalties and $1 to $1.5 billion back to consumers. Amazon admitted no wrongdoing.
Questions this video answers
Up to $2.5 billion.
About $1 billion as a civil penalty and $1–1.5 billion to consumers (the transcript quotes a $51 payment to an individual).
No — the transcript states Amazon did not admit wrongdoing.
FTC chair Andrew Ferguson is quoted.
Former FTC chair Bill Kovich is named.
Chapters
Amazon will pay $2.5 billion over prime dark pattern Amazon will pay up to $2.5 billion to resolve claims it steered millions of people into prime and made cancellation needlessly hard. The deal ends a Seattle jury trial days after it began and ranks among the largest Federal Trade Commission settlements ever. Roughly $1 billion is a civil penalty and 1 to $1.5 billion will go to consumers, with Elig receiving $51. Amazon did not admit wrongdoing. Spokesman Mark Laughlin said the company, quote, has always followed the law, adding the settlement lets it move forward and focus on innovating for customers. FTC chair Andrew Ferguson called it a significant outcome, saying we got more than we originally told the Judge we needed $1.5 billion going back to consumers and a billion dollars in civil penalties. Former FTC chair Bill Kovich said the result shows the commission is serious about policing major platforms. Critics like Nidhi Hedgty argued fines alone aren't enough, saying corporations can write a meager check to skip their day in court. So what's the real message here? It is good news that at least one tech billionaire in the country can't do whatever he wants, anytime he wants, break laws, take advantage of consumers and then just go to Dear Leader and say hey, your orange hair is looking good and get away with it scot free. That's, I think the good news here. Let's go a little bit deeper now. I have mixed feelings about Jeff Bezos and Amazon. On the, on the one hand, I think he's, he's done a lot of things that are anti competitive, fought taxes for years, the Internet and it really screwed over a lot of mom and pop stores who had an unfair disadvantage. The way he has pandered to Trump out of fear and trembling. And so, oh, you don't want us to endorse your opponent, we just want to endorse your opponent is frankly sickening. And he certainly engaged in a lot of anti competitive practices and put a lot of smaller companies out of business saying, oh, you sell tissue, we're going to sell our own tissue and it's going to be just like yours and it's going to be a couple pennies cheaper and yours is going to be buried. There's been a lot of unfair practice. Having said all of that, I do think that Jeff Bezos is one of the most brilliant businessmen in the history of capitalism. He truly has done something extraordinarily innovative. And full disclosure, I am a member of Amazon Prime. I use it daily. I used it about 10 minutes ago, went to the we have a fly in our house, can't get rid of it. And we went to the grocery store yesterday. You would think a grocery store to have a fly swap, couldn't find one, forgot about it, came home where we now live. There's no other stores within 20 minutes. I went on Amazon and for an extra $2, they're delivering me three fly swatters this morning. I don't have to get in a car, I don't have to drive, I don't have to spend money on gas. Is that bad for the planet? As far as a truck coming all the way to my yeah, it is. And I have conflicted feelings about it. But this fly is driving me crazy. And Jeff Bezos has the answer in a way that no one in the history of the world has ever done. I personally have spent, let's just say, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars on Amazon through Prime in the last 15 years, because it is a different experience. It's profoundly different being able to sit back in your own time in your pajamas or your underwear and look at virtually every product in the world available in a certain niche, to look at reviews, to pick what you want with one click and not have to get dressed, not have to drive somewhere, not have to worry about parking, not have to worry about traffic, not have to worry about getting to a store when it's closed on a holiday or after hours and having what you want delivered typically in two days. Now, there are a lot of companies that are really, really tricky about ever unsubscribing. I don't know if they've improved, but certainly one of the worst offenders in terms of reputation, and I've experienced it too, the Bally Fitness Gym. I mean, there used to be a time where if you signed up to be a member of the Bally Gym, the Bally Fitness Gym, you practically had to change your identity or declare bankruptcy and change all of your credit cards if you ever wanted to get out of paying them a monthly fee. They were that bad. In my experience with Amazon, I have found them to be relatively easy as far as canceling things. Periodically, I will sign up for the Kindle Unlimited and I just click. If I want to stop, I do. I've started and stopped many times. I found it easy to do that. There have been times when I've signed up for their audible, their unlimited audible, their monthly subscription, and then I cancel it. The hard part I have getting my head around is once you've used prime, why would you ever Want to stop. I realized not everyone is me. I'm not expecting you to be like me. But it saves me so much money on delivery charges if I were to use other providers, other online stores. And it saves me so much time. And when they say it's going to be here in two days, it's not always there in two days, but according to at least my own experience, Amazon really does deliver about 99% of the time when they say they're going to. You may have different results, but that is Bezos true genius is he is essentially the greatest organizational genius in the history of the world as far as organizing logistics, delivery systems, trucking, it's really hard to do. And he figured it out and Walmart didn't and ebay didn't and Google didn't, Jeff Bezos did. And he deserves genuine credit. Does that mean he deserves a pass on everything else? No. Should there be more regulation? Yes. Should the FTC maybe crack down on things it does to harm smaller people selling their products on there? Yeah. But again, I want to be fair. I'm here not to grind an ideological axe. I'm here as a sane, sensible centrist. And while a lot of people in liberal and progressive circles 30 years ago, 40 years ago, even today talked about how awful it is that in order to publish a book, there's only a handful of book publishers, you know, we're down to about five major ones based in New York City and one of them is owned by Rupert Murdoch. And it's such a consolidation of power and it limits voices. But I gotta tell you, nobody has done more to make it accessible to read a wide range of voices than Jeff Bezos. Because if you go to a typical Barnes and Noble in a mid sized town in America, if you could still find one, and you want to get all of the works of a left wing, a true left wing thought leader, Noam Chomsky, I don't happen to be a fan. You probably aren't going to find any of his books in a typical Barnes and noble that holds 30,000, 40,000 copies. But guess what? Jeff Bezos makes every single thing he's ever written available. And everything Karl Marx has written, and yes, every right wing thinker and every fascist thinker, it's all available on Amazon. That's a profound change in the world. That's a profound change in the way people can receive information. It's removing gatekeeping. Because anyone can publish a book these days. Now it used to be virtually impossible. And if you did self publish a book Good luck ever selling a copy. But there are people every single day who self publish books and are able to find a worldwide audience. Please note, I'm not suggesting it's a get rich quick scheme, but I see Amazon is doing so many good things for thinkers, creators across the ideological spectrum because it's removed that gatekeeper function that a physical store has. And for that I'm eternally grateful. You may have differing thoughts. Certainly if you loan own a local hardware store, a stationary store, or certainly a local bookstore, and you and your family owned it for 100 years and you went out of business 10 years ago or last month, chances are you don't like Jeff Bezos and you don't like Amazon. I feel for you. I do. But that is competition. I mean, that is the way capitalism is supposed to work now. It's supposed to be a level playing field. It wasn't level if you had to pay taxes. And for many, many, many years, Jeff Bezos did not. But still, he was an innovator. Your business didn't survive by definition. You didn't innovate quickly enough. And we've all had things that worked one time don't work enough. I used to do public workshops for my public speaking and media training once a month and it worked well for a while. One of my attendees is now a U.S. senator. And then it stopped working. Guess what? Things change. Competition changed. In that case, I tried to beat myself with other offerings in the form of online classes, so Amazon had to pay a fine. I frankly am happy even knowing we have an FTC that hasn't where everyone hasn't been fired. The idea that even the concept that trade should be regulated seems like it's under such attack in the United States. For that point and that point alone, I'm happy to see this decision. And frankly, for Amazon to pay a $2.5 billion fine, that's like you and me walking down the street and finding a couple of paintings pennies and picking it up and throwing it in a fountain. That's insignificant. More in a moment. Stay tuned. If you are listening to this on any podcasting platform, please follow it. Subscribe Leave a Review if you're watching on YouTube or any other social media platform, or on TikTok. Thanks for watching. Please leave a Like Leave a comment. Leave a criticism if you want, but be specific. I may talk about this at the end of the show. Lately there have been people who just all they want to do is say fail. You're sick. You're insane. Okay, maybe. But make your case. Don't be so lazy. That's. That's. I don't mind criticism. I do mind criticism. That is extremely lazy. So please be specific with your criticisms.
