Amazon accuses government of harassing Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy, ​​reveals vast scope of FTC investigation

In recently released filings with the Federal Trade Commission dated August 5, Amazon (AMZN) accused the agency of making “onerous” legal demands that serve “no purpose other than to harass top Amazon executives and disrupt business operations.”

The company also claims that FTC staff have been under pressure to close the investigation, and that it issued a formal recommendation to the commission on next steps as early as this fall.

The document filed by Amazon calls on FTC officials to intervene by limiting the scope of the FTC’s information requests. Extend the company response deadline. The firm’s attorneys can represent her 17 current or former Amazon executives, including Bezos and Jassy, ​​who have individually received civil subpoenas as part of the investigation.

The FTC declined to comment.

The petition highlights growing tensions between Amazon and the FTC. The FTC, under Chair Lina Khan, has been aggressively pushing for greater oversight of Big Tech. It also revealed that the scope of the FTC’s investigation was very broad. Its coverage covers nearly six Amazon services, including Audible, Amazon Music, Kindle Unlimited, and Subscriptions & Storage.

Last week, Khan — who helped lead the House antitrust investigations into Amazon in 2019 and 2020, apple (AAPL)Google and Facebook — The FTC has suggested that it may soon draft sweeping new privacy regulations to govern how businesses collect, use and share personal data of Americans.

This initiative could ultimately drive the core business models of many large technology platforms, including Amazon, and will help them understand everything from social media algorithms to targeted advertising to so-called “dark patterns.” question. Maintain a subscription to a particular setting or service.

Since March 2021, the FTC has been investigating whether Amazon may have illegally used deceptive techniques to automatically enroll people in Amazon Prime, and has reviewed Amazon’s filings. I’m here. Since then, Amazon has provided about 37,000 documents in response to investigations, the filing said.

A year later, after months of radio silence, the FTC sent the company a new legal request, dramatically expanding the FTC’s information request to include other companies, according to Amazon. Additionally, Amazon executives used “temporary messages” (features offered by apps like Signal and Telegram that automatically delete messages after they’re sent) to secretly discuss Amazon’s Prime subscription method. I also asked for information on whether it is possible.

“Work on fulfilling requests for these non-Prime programs has just begun and, as requested by staff, cannot be completed in a few weeks,” Amazon wrote in its FTC filing. Because each of the other businesses is run by a different team, Amazon needs time to interview dozens of potential witnesses he’s not authorized by the FTC and gather relevant data to respond to the investigation. will, says Filing.

This June’s new request comes after a Business Insider article in the spring described an internal Amazon document that reportedly showed how some within the company were concerned about the use of dark patterns related to Amazon Prime. Done. (Amazon’s filing shows that the FTC’s correspondence to the company referred to an insider article, but the filing does not disclose which.)

Source: www.cnn.com

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