What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - The U.S. vs Amazon Prime
Slate Daily Feed
Slate
3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 23 June 2023
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon, accusing the online giant of “tricking and trapping people into recurring subscriptions.” The complaint says Amazon “knowingly duped millions of consumers into unknowingly enrolling in Amazon Prime."
With murmurs of a larger antitrust probe against Amazon just around the corner, how serious is this suit for the tech giant?
Guest: Leah Nylen, antitrust reporter at Bloomberg
If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get benefits like zero ads on any Slate podcast, bonus episodes of shows like Slow Burn and Amicus—and you’ll be supporting the work we do here on What Next TBD. Sign up now at slate.com/whatnextplus to help support our work.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Why don't you go ahead and tell me who you are and what you do? |
| 0:07.6 | Yeah, I'm Lee on Island, I'm Bloomberg's antitrust reporter. |
| 0:12.4 | How many times a day do you think about Amazon? |
| 0:15.7 | Probably, I mean at least once, sometimes many times a day. |
| 0:21.3 | How many times a day do you think Lena Khan thinks about Amazon? |
| 0:25.8 | Oh my God, probably a lot more than me. |
| 0:28.8 | I mean, they have a lot about Amazon going on over there. |
| 0:36.4 | I called Leah because this week, the Federal Trade Commission, |
| 0:40.0 | which Lena Khan chairs, sued Amazon, saying the company tricked people into signing up |
| 0:46.1 | for its premium service prime and deliberately made it hard for them to cancel. |
| 0:51.9 | But the thing is, this is not the first fight between Lena Khan and Amazon. |
| 0:56.6 | It's not even the fifth. |
| 0:58.8 | Khan's focus on the company goes back before she even came to the FTC, |
| 1:03.9 | back to her time as a student at Yale Law School. |
| 1:07.7 | I mean, after all, this is a woman who wrote a pretty famous or maybe we should say famous |
| 1:12.9 | in antitrust circles, a law review paper about Amazon. |
| 1:17.0 | I'm like, I just wonder, is someone out of her brain always occupied with Amazon? |
| 1:23.4 | I mean, I sort of hope not for her because, like, giving them that much of her brain space, |
| 1:28.7 | but I mean, I guess, you know, from her point of view, it's all about, like, |
| 1:33.8 | rating antitrust on, so. |
| 1:35.7 | And would you say that this week, she rained it in a little or a lot? |
| 1:42.6 | Well, they certainly love the big bomb of them. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Slate, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Slate and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.

