Jury selection began Monday in a US government lawsuit accusing e-commerce giant Amazon of using tricks to enroll millions of customers into its Prime subscription service and then making it nearly impossible to cancel.Opening remarks by rival attorneys were slated for Tuesday, with witness testimony to follow.The Federal Trade Commission’s complaint, filed in June 2023, alleges that Amazon knowingly used designs known as “dark patterns” to trick consumers into signing up for the $139-per-year Prime service during checkouts.The case centers on two main allegations: that Amazon enrolled customers without clear consent through confusing checkout processes, and that it created a deliberately complex cancellation system internally nicknamed “Iliad” — after Homer’s epic about the long, arduous Trojan War.US District Court Judge John Chun last week ruled that Amazon violated an online shopper protection law by collecting Prime subscriber billing information before disclosing terms of the service, according to excerpts of the ruling shared on X, formerly Twitter.The summary judgement by Chun puts Amazon at a disadvantage for the trial before Chun in his Seattle courtroom.Chun is also presiding over a separate FTC case that accuses Amazon of running an illegal monopoly, with that case due to go to trial in 2027.- A ‘labyrinthine’ process -The cases are part of a volley of lawsuits launched in recent years in a bipartisan effort to rein in the power of the US tech giants after years of government complacency.According to court documents, Amazon was aware of widespread “nonconsensual enrollment” in Prime, but resisted changes that would reduce these unwanted sign-ups because they negatively affected the company’s revenue.The FTC alleges that Amazon’s checkout process forced customers to navigate confusing interfaces where declining Prime membership required finding small, inconspicuous links — while signing up for the service used prominent buttons. Crucial information about Prime’s price and automatic renewal was often hidden or disclosed in fine print, the FTC also alleges.”For years, Amazon has knowingly duped millions of consumers into unknowingly enrolling in its Amazon Prime service,” the original complaint states.The service has become central to Amazon’s business model, with Prime subscribers spending significantly more on the platform than non-members.The lawsuit also targets Amazon’s cancellation process, which required customers to navigate what the FTC describes as a “labyrinthine” four-page, six-click, fifteen-option process to cancel their membership.The FTC is seeking penalties, monetary relief, and permanent injunctions requiring the company to change its practices.The case in part relies on ROSCA, legislation that came into force in 2010 that specifically prohibits charging consumers for internet services without clear disclosure of terms, obtaining express consent, and providing simple cancellation mechanisms.The FTC alleges Amazon violated these requirements by failing to clearly disclose Prime’s terms before collecting billing information and by not obtaining genuine informed consent before charging customers.Amazon’s defense strategy will focus heavily on arguing that ROSCA and other regulations don’t specifically prohibit the practices in question and that the FTC is stretching the law.The company has also argued that it made improvements to its Prime enrollment and cancellation processes and that the allegations are out of date.The jury trial is expected to last about four weeks and will largely rely on internal Amazon communications and documents as well as Amazon executives and expert witnesses.If the FTC prevails, Amazon could face substantial financial penalties and be required to overhaul its subscription practices under court supervision.

Jimmy Kimmel’s late night talk show, which was abruptly pulled from the air last week after the US government threatened broadcasters, will be back on Tuesday, Disney announced Monday.The sudden suspension by ABC, which is owned by Disney, came after conservative complaints about comments Kimmel had made in the wake of the shooting of Christian activist Charlie Kirk.”Last Wednesday, we made the decision to suspend production on the show to avoid further inflaming a tense situation at an emotional moment for our country,” said a company statement.”It is a decision we made because we felt some of the comments were ill-timed and thus insensitive.  “We have spent the last days having thoughtful conversations with Jimmy, and after those conversations, we reached the decision to return the show on Tuesday.”Kimmel’s abrupt disappearance from the airwaves, apparently after government pressure on broadcasters who distribute ABC, sparked fury in liberal America, with opponents saying Kimmel had been targeted because he is a frequent critic of President Donald Trump.Trump had celebrated Kimmel’s removal, calling it “Great News for America.”Opponents saw it as the latest step in creeping government control of free speech, which is an article of faith for many Americans as well as a right enshrined in the country’s constitution.Some on the political right were also uneasy, including people who regularly count themselves as Trump allies, like Ted Cruz, the conservative senator from Texas, and firebrand broadcaster Tucker Carlson.Trump has repeatedly complained about negative media coverage of him, and last week said he thought it was “illegal.”- FCC threat -The Kimmel episode unfolded a week after Kirk, a close Trump ally, was shot dead on a Utah university campus, setting off a bitter battle over responsibility in deeply polarized America, with conservatives — including Trump — blaming “the radical left.”Authorities have charged 22-year-old Tyler Robinson and have not indicated they are looking for anyone else.In his show-opening monologue last Monday, Kimmel said “the MAGA gang” was “desperately trying to characterize this kid… as anything other than one of them.”He then showed footage of Trump pivoting from a question about how he had been affected by Kirk’s death to boasting about the new ballroom he is building at the White House, prompting laughter from the studio audience.”This is not how an adult grieves the murder of somebody called a friend. This is how a four-year-old mourns a goldfish,” Kimmel said.Two days later, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr threatened the licenses of ABC affiliates that broadcast Kimmel’s show.”I think it’s past time these (affiliates) themselves push back… and say, ‘Listen, we’re not going to run Kimmel anymore until you straighten this out, because we’re running the possibility of license revocation from the FCC,'” he told right-wing podcaster Benny Johnson.Nexstar — one of the country’s biggest owners of ABC affiliate stations, which is in the middle of a multi-billion-dollar merger requiring FCC approval — then announced it would be removing the show from its stations.Sinclair, another media group that also yanked the show, said Monday it would not return it to the airwaves, despite Disney’s announcement.”Sinclair will be preempting Jimmy Kimmel Live! across our ABC affiliate stations and replacing it with news programming,” the company said on social media, using an industry term for removing a show.”Discussions with ABC are ongoing as we evaluate the show’s potential return.”- Hollywood stars -Before Disney’s about-face was announced on Monday, a constellation of Hollywood stars signed an open letter calling the decision to pull the show “a dark moment for freedom of speech in our nation (that is) unconstitutional and un-American.””The government is threatening private companies and individuals that the President disagrees with. We can’t let this threat to our freedom of speech go unanswered,” said the letter by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).Signatories to the letter included Marvel star Pedro Pascal, Tom Hanks, Jennifer Aniston, Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro.After Monday’s announcement the ACLU welcomed the news, saying: “ABC made the right call.” 

Antifa, designated a “domestic terrorist organization” by US President Donald Trump on Monday, is a nebulous movement of left-wing “anti-fascist” activists that experts say is more a political ideology than an organized group.Trump’s move follows the September 10 assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk and is one of several actions the Republican president has threatened to take against opponents he accuses of fomenting violence.- Who is Antifa? -Antifa stands for anti-fascism, and the name comes from early 1930s Germany, where socialist “anti-fa” groups attempted to stand up to the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.Antifa has no national leader or centralized organizational structure and is made up of “independent, radical, like-minded groups and individuals,” according to a 2020 Congressional Research Service analysis.Mark Bray, author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” said Antifa is “a kind of coalition politics of all kinds of radicals, from different kinds of socialists to communists, anarchists and more independent radicals.””Sometimes I compare it to feminism,” Bray, a historian at Rutgers University, told The Washington Post. “There are feminist groups, but feminism itself is not a group. There are Antifa groups, but Antifa itself is not a group.”Anti-fascist groups in the United States have campaigned on a range of social justice issues in the past two decades but their principal focus has been countering the resurgence of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups.One of the oldest, Rose City Antifa of Portland, Oregon, began in 2007 to shut down a neo-Nazi skinhead music festival called Hammerfest.Antifa-aligned activists, often masked and dressed entirely in black, protest against racism, far-right values and what they consider fascism, and say violent tactics are sometimes justified in self-defense.Such protesters have been increasingly involved in direct confrontations with right-wing groups since Trump’s first election to the White House in 2016.During Trump’s January 20, 2017 inauguration, scores of black-clad, mask-wearing Antifa followers and other protestors smashed windows in Washington.In August that year, they were at the vanguard of counter-demonstrations when white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, and engaged in physical fights with the rightists.- Can Trump designate Antifa as terrorists?Unclear.While federal law enforcement’s purview includes combating domestic terrorism, the United States has no statute that permits designating domestic groups as terrorist organizations, as there is for foreign groups like the Islamic State or Al-Qaeda.During his first term in office, following the protests against police brutality sparked by the murder of George Floyd, Trump announced that he would designate Antifa as “terrorists” on the same level as Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State but nothing came of it.The global terror designation is a powerful tool for law enforcement: it permits the arrest and imprisonment of someone who merely expresses support for those jihadist groups or others. That law has not been expanded to domestic groups for good reason: such a law, many fear, could tempt a leader to deploy it against political rivals and would violate First Amendment free speech protections.

US President Donald Trump signed an order Monday designating the left-wing Antifa movement as a domestic terrorist organization, the White House said, in a move sparked by the killing of right-wing ally Charlie Kirk.Antifa is a shorthand term for “anti-fascist” used to describe diffuse far-left groups, and there have been questions since Trump first mooted the designation last week about how to define it.Trump’s order on Monday described Antifa as a “militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government” and was using “violence and terrorism” to suppress free speech.”Because of the aforementioned pattern of political violence designed to suppress lawful political activity and obstruct the rule of law, I hereby designate Antifa as a ‘domestic terrorist organization’,” said the order.But in an apparent nod to the questions about how to define Antifa, his order accused it of using “elaborate means and mechanisms to shield the identities of its operatives.”It used the same methods to hide its sources of funding, and recruit new members, the order said.Trump’s order also casts a net wide against the nebulous group. His order says US authorities can act against “any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa, or for which Antifa or any person claiming to act on behalf of Antifa provided material support.” Trump has repeatedly warned of a crackdown on left-wing groups since the assassination of activist Kirk, who was killed on September 10 at a Utah university campus, sparking right-wing rage.US authorities have charged suspected shooter, 22-year-old Tyler Robinson, with murder. Robinson justified the attack by citing the “hatred” he accused Kirk of spreading, according to investigators. – Rise in violence -But Trump has also threatened action against what he has called Antifa since his first term. He has blamed it for various wrongs from violence against police to being behind the US Capitol riot on January 6, 2021 that aimed to block Joe Biden’s presidential election win.Critics of the Republican president warn such a move could be used as a pretext to quash dissent and target political rivals.While Kirk was a vocal conservative, the United States has seen violence targeting members of both political parties in recent years, amid a sharp rise in polarization and easy access to firearms.Antifa — whose name has roots in socialist groups in 1930s Germany that opposed Hitler — has a track record of confronting right-wing groups and engaging in civil disobedience.Antifa-aligned activists, often dressed entirely in black, protest against racism, far-right values and what they consider fascism, and say violent tactics are sometimes justified as self-defense. During Trump’s first inauguration in January 2017 scores of black-clad, mask-wearing Antifa and other protestors smashed windows and burned a car in Washington.Antifa was also involved in counter-protests to racist demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia later that year. 

Antifa, designated a “domestic terrorist organization” by US President Donald Trump on Monday, is a nebulous movement of left-wing “anti-fascist” activists that experts say is more a political ideology than an organized group.Trump’s move follows the September 10 assassination of conservative influencer Charlie Kirk and is one of several actions the Republican president has threatened to take against opponents he accuses of fomenting violence.- Who is Antifa? -Antifa stands for anti-fascism, and the name comes from early 1930s Germany, where socialist “anti-fa” groups attempted to stand up to the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazis.Antifa has no national leader or centralized organizational structure and is made up of “independent, radical, like-minded groups and individuals,” according to a 2020 Congressional Research Service analysis.Mark Bray, author of “Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook,” said Antifa is “a kind of coalition politics of all kinds of radicals, from different kinds of socialists to communists, anarchists and more independent radicals.””Sometimes I compare it to feminism,” Bray, a historian at Rutgers University, told The Washington Post. “There are feminist groups, but feminism itself is not a group. There are Antifa groups, but Antifa itself is not a group.”Anti-fascist groups in the United States have campaigned on a range of social justice issues in the past two decades but their principal focus has been countering the resurgence of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups.One of the oldest, Rose City Antifa of Portland, Oregon, began in 2007 to shut down a neo-Nazi skinhead music festival called Hammerfest.Antifa-aligned activists, often masked and dressed entirely in black, protest against racism, far-right values and what they consider fascism, and say violent tactics are sometimes justified in self-defense.Such protesters have been increasingly involved in direct confrontations with right-wing groups since Trump’s first election to the White House in 2016.During Trump’s January 20, 2017 inauguration, scores of black-clad, mask-wearing Antifa followers and other protestors smashed windows in Washington.In August that year, they were at the vanguard of counter-demonstrations when white supremacists and neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, and engaged in physical fights with the rightists.- Can Trump designate Antifa as terrorists?Unclear.While federal law enforcement’s purview includes combating domestic terrorism, the United States has no statute that permits designating domestic groups as terrorist organizations, as there is for foreign groups like the Islamic State or Al-Qaeda.During his first term in office, following the protests against police brutality sparked by the murder of George Floyd, Trump announced that he would designate Antifa as “terrorists” on the same level as Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State but nothing came of it.The global terror designation is a powerful tool for law enforcement: it permits the arrest and imprisonment of someone who merely expresses support for those jihadist groups or others. That law has not been expanded to domestic groups for good reason: such a law, many fear, could tempt a leader to deploy it against political rivals and would violate First Amendment free speech protections.