News of the Cyber World

[kyonides]

FTC Sues Amazon for ‘Sabotaging’
Customer Attempts to Quit Prime Service

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken legal action against Amazon for allegedly enrolling customers in its Prime program without their consent and then devising an elaborate scheme to prevent them from unsubscribing.

The consumer protection agency made the allegations in a lawsuit (pdf) filed on June 21 at the U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington.

“Amazon used manipulative, coercive, or deceptive user-interface designs known as ‘dark patterns’ to trick consumers into enrolling in automatically-renewing Prime subscriptions,” the agency said in a statement.

The FTC accused Amazon of “cancellation trickery” and knowingly failing to address non-consensual subscriptions to the Prime service, which comes at a monthly charge of $14.99.

A subscriptions to Prime buys access to Prime Video, as well as free Amazon delivery and faster shipping. In the first quarter of 2023, Prime accounted for some $9.6 billion in Amazon earnings.
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“Amazon designed the Iliad cancellation process (‘Iliad Flow’) to be labyrinthinine,” the agency claimed, while alleging that Amazon leadership “slowed or rejected user experience changes that would have made Iliad simpler for consumers because those changes adversely affected Amazon’s bottom line.”

In order to cancel Prime, consumers must to click multiple pages where they’re faced with confusing options, with many selections taking customers out of the “Iliad Flow” so that in order to unsubscribe, they would have to start the process all over again.

“On the eighth and final page, Amazon presented five buttons,” the FTC said in the complaint. “Only the fifth and final button (‘End Now’) immediately cancelled the membership.”
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A number of Amazon employees pressed the company’s executives to address “nonconsensual enrollment” and make changes so that the firm would not be tricking its customers, the FTC said.

However, despite the issue being flagged for action internally, Amazon and its leadership “slowed, avoided, and even undid user experience changes that they knew would reduce Nonconsensual Enrollment because those changes would also negatively affect Amazon’s bottom line.”

Meta Lowers Minimum Age of Quest Headsets
in Bid to Lure Children Into VR

Facebook parent company Meta announced plans to enable children as young as 10 years old to enter virtual reality through its Meta Quest headset later this year, despite a recent advisory warning social media can negatively impact the mental health and well-being of children.

“Today we’re announcing changes to give families even more ways to use and enjoy Meta Quest. Starting later this year, parents will be able to set up parent-managed Meta accounts for Meta Quest 2 and 3 for their children ages 10—12,” the company stated in a blog post on Friday.

The policy change will lower the minimum age for a Quest account from 13 years old in order to allow preteens to immerse themselves in a virtual world filled with digital avatars and other technological fabrications.

In its blog post, Meta said that parents will play a pivotal role in creating and managing their children’s accounts for the Quest 2 and Quest 3 headsets, and promised that preteens’ access will be limited to “age-appropriate” apps deploying virtual reality, or VR.
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The Mark Zuckerberg-owned company’s push to lower the minimum age in a bid to lure preteens into a virtual world comes amid debate over potential health consequences linked to social media use and wireless device radiation.
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“The most common question parents ask me is, ‘Is social media safe for my kids.’ The answer is that we don’t have enough evidence to say it’s safe, and in fact, there is growing evidence that social media use is associated with harm to young people’s mental health,” Murthy said in a press release published in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

“Children are exposed to harmful content on social media, ranging from violent and sexual content, to bullying and harassment,” he added. “And for too many children, social media use is compromising their sleep and valuable in-person time with family and friends. We are in the middle of a national youth mental health crisis, and I am concerned that social media is an important driver of that crisis—one that we must urgently address.”

Here is the article published back in February on the safety concerns several people have voiced about the Virtual Reality Headsets.