FTC seeks delay in Amazon Prime lawsuit, blames Musk's federal layoffs

In a nutshell: The FTC wants a judge to delay the agency's trial against Amazon over allegations it used deceptive marketing practices for its Prime subscription program. The reason for the request is that Elon Musk and the Trump administration's layoffs of federal workers has left the FTC short on employees and funds. The FTC said in its 2023 complaint against Amazon that the company knowingly tricks people into signing up for Prime through the use of "Dark Patterns," a reference to the number of options at the checkout suggesting people sign up for automatically renewing Prime subscriptions. It also alleged that canceling the subscription is a task involving multiple unnecessary steps, which could cause some people to give up before the end. A trial was due to begin in September, but FTC lawyer Jonathan Cohen has asked US District Judge John Chun to postpone it by two months. "Our resource constraints are severe and really unique to this moment," Cohen said during a status hearing ... Read full article.