Amazon Must Pay For Reaping Millions In Profits From Children

Children have been a target for corporate greed for a long time. From tobacco companies targeting teens in order to get them addicted earlier to fast food companies creating highly specialized campaigns for kids and teens, corporation have long recognized children as easy marks and the best opportunity to create either early addiction or brand loyalty which are often times not mutually exclusive.

Today's prime example of this phenomenon is Amazon which reaped millions in profits from in-app purchases by children playing mobile computer games. As the Slate article describes, "Amazon’s troubles began in 2011, when the company first pioneered its Kindle Fire OS technology for mobile and tablet devices like the Kindle. As Ars Technica warned at the time, parental controls weren’t the default setting, while in-app purchases—things like virtual currency, stars, and acorns in mobile games including Candy Crush Saga and Ice Age Village—were facilitated by the 'one-click shopping' default. Although Amazon later updated its settings to mandate a password for in-app purchases over $20, a security update in 2013 meant that parental authorization for a single charge 'often opened an undisclosed window of 15 minutes to an hour during which the child could then make unlimited charges without further authorization', according to a complaint filed by the Federal Trade Commission."

The FTC brought the case against Amazon over three years ago and the judge finally ruled in the FTC's favor last year, saying, "a reasonable consumer unaware of the possibility of in-app purchases would not assume she was authorizing unforeseen charges." This ruling has finally resulted in Amazon refunding over $70 million to customers.

Despite this kind of behavior and years of not being profitable in order to drive its competitors out of the market to create its own monopoly is certain areas, Amazon stock recently crossed above $1000 per share. Could it be that the current capitalist system is rewarding the wrong behavior...