By Lauren Feiner , a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering

Arizona accuses Amazon of being a monopoly and deceiving consumers with ‘dark patterns’

submited by

Style Pass

2024-05-16 04:00:04

By Lauren Feiner , a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed two new lawsuits against Amazon on Wednesday, bringing similar complaints to those the company is already facing from the Federal Trade Commission.

Both of the lawsuits are brought under Arizona’s own state statutes in the Superior Court of Arizona. One of the lawsuits accuses Amazon of engaging in deceptive business practices that violate the state’s Consumer Fraud Act by allegedly using design tricks known as dark patterns to keep users from canceling their Amazon Prime subscriptions. This is similar to a lawsuit the FTC filed against the company in June.

The other lawsuit accuses Amazon of breaking Arizona’s Uniform State Antitrust Act by unfairly maintaining monopoly status by enforcing agreements with third-party sellers that restrict them from offering lower prices off of the platform than they do on Amazon. This kind of language, sometimes called a “most favored nation” clause, has also been targeted by other state AGs, including in the District of Columbia and California. (The DC case was thrown out, but the AG is trying to get it reinstated.)