Amazon duped millions of consumers into enrolling in Prime, US FTC says

Re:Amazon duped millions of consumers into enrolling in Prim... by atleastoptimal on Wednesday June 21, 2023 @11:17PM (#36427618)

Even if a company deliberately avoided dark patterns, adopted an idealistic "don't be evil" approach, is it inevitable that either:

1. To maximize profit, it sacrifices that approach and becomes evil

2. It fails to compete with other companies which do use dark patterns to maximize profit

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Re:Amazon duped millions of consumers into enrolling in Prim... by generic92034 on Thursday June 22, 2023 @03:57AM (#36429215)

I do not think this is true in all cases. The whole platform economy has so little to fear from actual competition that they could afford to avoid dark patterns and overall take a small loss in profitability. It is only that they do not want to eat even the small loss.

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Re:Amazon duped millions of consumers into enrolling in Prim... by runamok on Thursday June 22, 2023 @04:09AM (#36429314)

I disagree. Compare Walmart and Costco on a lot of their processes and practices around vendors and employees and I think you can find some stark differences.

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Re:Amazon duped millions of consumers into enrolling in Prim... by boringuser2 on Thursday June 22, 2023 @07:54AM (#36430740)

That's why government enforcement is wildly considered the norm in cases where corporate incentive to abuse must be attenuated.

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