The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Amazon
A Sept. 25 press release from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) declares a sort of victory: “FTC Secures Historic $2.5 Billion Settlement Against Amazon.” The settlement comes in the infamous “dark patterns” case, where—as the press release reminds us—the agency “alleged that Amazon used deceptive methods to sign up consumers for Prime subscriptions and made it exceedingly difficult to cancel.” (Here’s the initial June 2023 complaint, and here’s the amended complaint filed in September 2023.)
Those methods must have been sneaky indeed, given there were a reported 197 million Amazon Prime subscriptions in the United States alone by March 2025—up from a nontrivial 184 million subscribers in June 2024. That is a rather a large number, given the total U.S. population of about 340 million people.