Compiled 5 October 2025, updated 23 January 2026
There are two news items:
- digital platforms are increasingly powerful and arrogant : Amazon is an example of this
- the traffic generated by e-commerce is absolutely ‘out of control’, although in Italy practically no one seems to have realised this.
1.Amazon, accused in the US of deceptive practices on Prime, agrees to pay $2.5 billion
The global e-commerce leader has thus concluded a lawsuit in which it was accused of knowingly ‘deceiving or misleading’ users by making it very easy to sign up for its loyalty service and too difficult to unsubscribe.
The trial did not last… Three days after a hearing opened in a Seattle federal court to determine whether Amazon was guilty of deceptive practices on its Prime loyalty service – which offers access to faster and free parcel deliveries as well as on-demand video and music services – the global e-commerce leader agreed on Thursday 25 September to pay $2.5 billion (€2.1 billion) to settle the case. The group founded by Jeff Bezos will pay $1 billion in penalties to the US Treasury and $1.5 billion in compensation to customers. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is behind the complaint in 2023.
Specifically, the FTC accused the online retail platform of knowingly ‘deceiving or misleading’ users by making it very easy to sign up for its Prime loyalty service. According to the indictment, Amazon did not clearly set out the terms of use, including the monthly payment ($15 per month in the US), which allegedly prompted Internet users to subscribe to Prime without having given their informed consent.
On the contrary, the FTC found unsubscribing from Prime too complicated. Consumers wishing to leave the service had to “navigate through a four-page, six-click process with approximately fifteen options” and warning messages, the complaint states.
Another more cumbersome procedure in 2027
According to the FTC, the case was emblematic of ‘dark patterns’, i.e. the misleading pages or messages sometimes created by digital giants in their interfaces to influence user behaviour. This is a trend that most authorities, also in Europe, are keen to counter. For its part, Amazon has always maintained that it has not broken the law. It has since changed its Prime cancellation page, notes CNN.
The resolution of this case, however, does not end the tensions between the Seattle-based group and the US antitrust authorities. Another, far more serious proceeding is on the way. Amazon is accused of having ‘illegally maintained its monopoly’ through ‘anti-competitive and unfair strategies ‘. A trial on the matter is expected to begin in early 2027.
According to the FTC, Amazon was guilty of preventing third-party sellers from selling its products on other distribution channels at prices lower than those offered on its e-commerce platform, but also of imposing high costs on them by taking “nearly 50 per cent” of their sales on average in exchange for various services, or of “conditioning” their eligibility for the crucial Prime programme on the use of its logistics services, or even “favouring” its own products in search results…
Pokémon, Lego, sports shoes, football shirts, AirPods: this is the current hit-parade of products seized in Liège, which has become one of the main European hubs of Chinese e-commerce..
If 400 million products ordered online landed in these facilities in 2023, it should, according to customs forecasts, be 1.4 billion in 2025. “The Chinese surge? It’s here…” said one customs official. Created in the early 1990s and seen as a conversion tool for a region that experienced the collapse of its main industries, including steel, in the late 20th century, this former military airport also opened a passenger terminal in 2005. Only one company still operates there, and only for a few weeks. The continued development of the cargo business is crucial for the future of the site..
On the main runway, the operators constantly move low-cost products of the fast fashion brand Temu, Shein or AliExpress – Alibaba ‘s platform -, but also tonnes of flowers from Ethiopia, fish from the Far North, horses – a special wing is devoted to their import or export under high protection – oversized industrial equipment (‘oversize’), largecars..
Below: parcels in Liège
Only 0.005 % of the goods are controlled. And the technical means at the team’s disposal are probably largely insufficient to cope with the exponential development of trade..
‘E-commerce is for the moment my biggest concern, parcels are crushing us and things are getting worse,’ said Kristian Vanderwaeren, director general of Belgian customs, in the daily L’Echo on 20 September. According to him, ‘hundreds of millions of dangerous or non-compliant products’ enter the kingdom every year…
Experts also recommend the imposition of parcel processing fees in order to finance controls and a digital passport that would contain detailed information on the conformity and composition of products. Last recommendations: ‘conduct a national awareness campaign on the French model in order to make consumers aware of the risks’ and create an e-commerce control body.
In the Liège hub, Alibaba was suspected of espionage in 2023.
And Tik-Tok was used to win the elections, later annulled, in Romania. While Temu, in Europe, has more than 115 million customers: cross-referencing these facts, one understands the disproportionate power of platforms, which are, by now, like transnational states.
Like Amazon, these entities may perhaps pay fines in the billions but will almost certainly never pay taxes equivalent to those paid by their competitors. And they will therefore continue to operate by competing unfairly with them.
P.S.: …The US has taken a leading position in cloud services thanks to private sector innovation. However, competition has generated companies with enormous market power. According to the research group Synergy , AWS, Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud together control almost two-thirds of global cloud services capacity….
Read also :
France : government initiates proceedings to block e-commerce giant Shein’s website
Amazon reduces sales commissions in Europe in price war with Shein and Temu
Confirmation that the issue is geopolitical and cannot be handled by one state alone comes from the misapplication by Italy and Romania alone of the Chinese parcel tax (Republic 22 January 2026).
