Nine Circles of Shell

Amazon's Unethical Dark Patterns

I know it's been knocked out of the news cycle now by the Oceangate sub and Wagner's mutiny bluff-charge, but recently Amazon was sued by the FTC for using dark patterns to trick people into signing up for Amazon Prime and making it overly difficult to cancel that subscription. When I read this I double checked my account and realized that I was, indeed, a non-consenting Prime member. How?

I didn't see much coverage of what the actual dark pattern is, so here is how I think they got me. Do not click the free overnight shipping option if you aren't already a Prime member, or you don't intend to sign up for Prime. By clicking that, you apparently consent to signing up for Prime and to being billed monthly for it. At time of writing, it is Prime month/week/whatever so they actually WILL give you free overnight shipping if you aren't a Prime member. When I saw the free overnight option, my exact thoughts were "Oh it must be some kind of promotion and then they'll remove this option eventually when the promotion is done". It didn't occur to me that it was actually me signing up for Prime.

Part of the coverage has been around Amazon's "labyrinthine" cancellation process. I found the easiest way to cancel was to just google "cancel prime" rather than navigate from within Amazon.

So here's what to take away.

1. Don't click the free overnight shipping options if you aren't already a Prime member, it isn't Prime month/week/epoch or you don't intend to become a Prime member.
2. If you are tricked to sign up for Prime, it's easier to just google "cancel Prime" or something to that effect than it is to navigate to wherever you get to cancel from your Amazon home page.

Another note: it felt pretty cathartic to tell them that I hope the FTC destroys them in the cancellation survery.