I actually clicked on “continue without Amazon Prime” once and the next screen said congratulations new prime member. I had to search how to undo my free month trial that auto renews smh
Yet somehow you were still able to type two words. Clap, clap
We get what they’re talking about: default selection being a subscription rather than just buying the item like you originally asked. Shady practice at best.
People read left to right correct? If you read correctly the first option you see is not to get prime. My point is the poster for some reason thought cancel anytime somehow meant that was the button to press…
However, the Prime option is deliberately colourful and placed next to the grey no-Prime option so the Prime option is the first thing you see. Then maybe you look back and see 'oh there's an option to continue without Prime'.
TBD, but I would not be suprised. As an aside, I did not see any such shenenigans when buying from Amazon most likely because EU tends to be more liberal with the fines.
I don’t understand why there is so much defense for this in the comments. Amazon is a huge company with professional design teams, if part of their checkout process is even a little misleading in favor of an upsell it is definitely intentional.
Yes. That’s Amazon using dark patterns. This demonstrates that enshittification is not confined to social media.
Ooop, it may have happened even before Twitter, Reddit etc.
From Corey Doctorow: Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if Amazon’s enshittification is because [Jeff] Bezos was a cynic or because he sold out. Once Amazon could make more money by screwing its customers, that screw-job became a fait accompli.
I downloaded the Amazon app a while back. The first message that popped up with a “join prime” screen. I very nearly tapped the join button because it was the only button on the screen and I wasn’t paying attention - I had to scroll to find the “maybe later” button. They seem to love their hostile UI.
It’s absolutely, 100% intentionally misleading. They even recognize that internally and are currently being sued for just that.
In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, the agency accused Amazon of using deceptive designs, known as “dark patterns,” to deceive consumers into enrolling in Prime, which provides subscribers with perks such as faster shipping for an fee of $139 annually, or $14.99 a month.
The FTC said Amazon made it difficult for customers to purchase an item without also subscribing to Prime. In some cases, consumers were presented with a button to complete their transactions — which didn’t clearly state it would also enroll them in Prime.
Getting out of a subscription was often too complicated, and Amazon leadership slowed or rejected changes that would have made canceling easier, the complaint said.
Internally, Amazon called the process “Iliad,” a reference to the ancient Greek poem about lengthy siege of Troy during the Trojan war.
The examples in the FTC complaint are all well and good, and as I already said, Amazon sucks and their predatory practices are well-known, but this specific example, the one we’re talking about on this post, is pretty pedestrian.
If the OP were to post the 7-step process it takes to cancel a prime membership, that would be firmly and wholly in asshole design territory, I know, I’ve had to go through it myself. But just posting a screenshot of a mild upsell that has a clear set of binary options on opposite sides of the screen and saying “Amazon bad” doesn’t really contribute much - everyone knows Amazon sucks, and there are plenty of examples of them sucking, this just really isn’t a very good one.
On a quick inspection the left barely looks like it’s worth reading and it’s easy to miss the link, so you’re led to thinking there’s a yes and a no button on the right. Click the no button and you’ve subscribed to Prime.
Obviously if you stop and actually look at everything you’ll realise what’s up. But this relies on you rushing and being misled in to signing up, which clearly works for them.
Apparently they need to ask for consent before detecting whether you have an adblocker, according to EU law. I assume you’d be safe when you use a plugin like Consentomatic or I don’t care about cookies and you just don’t log in to Google.
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