Amazon fined $2.5B for Prime 'trickery'

PLUS: Patients control AI and robotics with thought

Jennifer Mossalgue

September 26, 2025

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. In a historic FTC smackdown, Amazon is shelling out $2.5B over claims it duped millions into Prime subscriptions and made canceling deliberately hellish.

The settlement includes $1.5B in customer refunds plus additional penalties — could you be owed a piece of that refund pie?

In today’s tech rundown:

Amazon fined $2.5B for Prime ‘dark patterns’
Trump signs $14B TikTok deal
Toyota launches futuristic Woven City
AI tool tracks super polluters near you
Quick hits on other tech news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AMAZON

🤑 Amazon fined $2.5B for Prime ‘dark patterns’

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: In a historic deal, Amazon agreed to shell out $2.5B to settle a blockbuster FTC lawsuit alleging it “tricked” millions of customers into signing up for Prime and then made quitting a next-level headache.

The details:

Amazon must pay $2.5B in a landmark settlement, including $1B in civil penalties and $1.5B in direct refunds to affected customers.
Roughly 35M Americans may qualify for refund payments, with individual payouts capped at $51.
The FTC accused Amazon of deploying deceptive “dark patterns” like pop-ups and confusing cancellation flows to enroll users in Prime.
The company is also required to eliminate misleading buttons like “No, I don’t want Free Shipping,” to simplify opting out of Prime.

Why it matters: The company now faces court-mandated redesign of its Prime ecosystem — forced to rebuild sign-up flows and cancellation processes under federal oversight. For a platform that built an empire on frictionless commerce, being required to make leaving as easy as joining might hurt more than the fine.

TIKTOK

💃🏻 Trump signs $14B TikTok deal

Image source: Ideology / The Rundown

The Rundown: Trump signed the order forcing ByteDance to offload TikTok’s U.S. operations for $14B, handing the app to a power consortium of American tech moguls and keeping 170M users scrolling.

The details:

Oracle, Michael Dell, and Rupert Murdoch’s investment group will now control TikTok’s algorithm, data infrastructure, and content moderation for U.S. users.
ByteDance’s ownership dropped from majority control to under 20%, effectively neutering Chinese influence over the platform's operations.
The $14B deal preserves TikTok’s existing features while placing all U.S. user data under U.S. corporate oversight and government compliance.
TikTok will remain fully operational during the transition, avoiding the platform shutdown that would have devastated creators and small businesses.

Why it matters: After three years of back-and-forth negotiations, the $14B sale shows Washington’s willingness to force ownership changes over platform shutdowns. The protracted process also creates a template for addressing foreign tech companies deemed security risks, with other Chinese-owned platforms facing similar prospects.

TOYOTA

🎌 Toyota launches futuristic Woven City

Image source: Toyota

The Rundown: Five years of hype finally materialized: Toyota’s Woven City cracked open its gates this week, unleashing the first 300 brave souls into a corporate fever dream of autonomous everything at the base of Mt. Fuji.

The details:

After five years of CES promises, residents are now lab rats testing smart homes, robo-cars, and AI companions in Toyota's mobility playground.
Self-driving shuttles prowl the streets, delivery bots work 24/7, and every home doubles as a data-harvesting smart lab feeding Toyota’s algorithms.
Testing includes e-Palette autonomous shuttles, compact EVs, personal mobility robots, plus pet robots designed to study human-machine bonding.
For Toyota chairman Akio Toyoda, this represents the company’s metamorphosis from car manufacturer to mobility overlord.

Why it matters: While Tesla fights software wars and Waymo maps every pothole, Toyota is studying how people actually live with autonomous tech. The plan scales fast: 2K residents and tourist access in 2026, and a fully operational human-tech integration lab. It’s either the future of urban living or the world’s most expensive focus group.

CLIMATE TECH

🔥 AI tool tracks super polluters near you

Image source: Climate TRACE

The Rundown: Al Gore’s nonprofit Climate TRACE just released a global AI-powered tool tracking toxic air pollution from more than 660M sources, down to power stations, factories, refineries, and shipping ports that lace city skies with deadly PM2.5.

The details:

The platform identifies “super emitters,” the dirtiest 10% of pollution sources whose toxic plumes directly threaten massive populations.
Advanced mapping shows how pollution drifts from specific facilities into neighborhoods, revealing which areas get hit hardest by industrial toxins.
Satellite data merged with Carnegie Mellon weather models creates neighborhood-level pollution maps for both typical and worst-case days.
Users can zoom into any location to see population density overlays, identifying exactly which industrial sites are affecting nearby residents.

Why it matters: For the first time, communities can pinpoint exactly which facilities are pumping toxins into their air and hold specific polluters accountable with hard data. The tool transforms air pollution from an invisible killer into a documented public health threat, giving activists and regulators the ammunition to target the worst offenders.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

Apple is urging the EU to scrap its Digital Markets Act, arguing the law is unfairly targeting tech giants like itself and puts users at greater risk while stifling innovation.

Instagram just hit 3B monthly active users, with Meta crediting the milestone to explosive growth in Reels short-form video and private messaging.

Elon Musk’s xAI signed a deal with the U.S. government to provide Grok to federal agencies for just 42 cents per agency for 18 months.

Chinese autonomous driving startup Momenta is seeking to raise hundreds of millions of dollars at a valuation above $5B, Bloomberg reports.

Xiaomi just reportedly launched a $630 flagship smartphone aimed at challenging Apple’s iPhone 17.

Australian researchers are working on a shark bite-resistant wetsuit for surfers by testing four materials against tiger and white shark bites.

Waymo has launched “Waymo for Business,” letting companies easily set up accounts so employees can use its robotaxis in major cities.

Smartphone maker Nothing is spinning off its affordable CMF brand into a standalone India-based subsidiary, aiming to expand budget smartphones globally.

Meta is opening new Meta Lab pop-up shops in Las Vegas, New York, and LA this fall to showcase and demo its smart glasses and VR hardware.

California startup Telo, maker of the compact $41K MT1 electric truck, has raised $20M in Series A funding co-led by Tesla co-founder Marc Tarpenning.

NASA is considering using a nuclear strike as a last-resort defense against asteroid 2024 YR4, which now has about a 4% chance of colliding with the moon in 2032.

COMMUNITY