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Today, we're going to look at some famous times tech companies have screwed over their

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customers in the pursuit of money, because who hasn't felt like they've been hosed at some point?

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First up, a company that's actually beloved by quite a few people, Nintendo. Although their

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business model of publishing quality first-party games that has kept them in better graces with

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many gamers than, say, EA, they've been the subject of plenty of criticism for going overboard

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when protecting their intellectual property. This can honestly be a whole video on its own,

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but we're going to talk about a couple of their greatest hits. Back in 2020, Nintendo made headlines

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for sending a cease and desist letter to the organizers of a major Super Smash Bros. Melee

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tournament, alleging that they were using an unauthorized emulator to allow the tournament to

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take place. While it may seem to make sense that a major game publisher wouldn't want pirated copies

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of one of their smash hits going around, the problem was that the tournament was only moved

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online that year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a terrible look for Nintendo, as the

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organizers were trying to keep players socially distanced for safety reasons, and Nintendo had

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not, and still hasn't, provided any legal way for players to play Melee online on current hardware.

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Nintendo was, of course, within its rights to do this, but you'd think a company so concerned about

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piracy would try to make its own games more accessible for those who want to play them and

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also allow greater exposure to folks who might be interested in buying them. This, however,

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often hasn't happened, with the company not only not offering authorized ways to play older titles,

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but also being very aggressive with going after fan projects that weren't made for profit and

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even being heavy-handed with how they approached fan videos. In 2013, while other publishers

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generally didn't have much issue with game footage being posted to YouTube, Nintendo instead

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claimed ad revenue on Let's Play videos that featured their games, meaning none of that sweet

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sweet YouTube money would go to the creators. Nintendo responded to that backlash by creating

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a controversial creators program that gave a cut of the proceeds to these players,

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but the up to 40% cut Nintendo was still taking led to yet more uproar until they finally axed

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the program in 2018. But people were left wondering why Nintendo hated the idea of free

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advertising so much. Let's step away from video games and talk about an anti-consumer tactic

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that was so intentionally confusing that it drew an official comparison to ancient epic poetry.

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Amazon doesn't seem like a company that you'd immediately think of as anti-consumer,

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what, with a fast shipping and a reputation for low prices and a relatively permissive return

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but the way it gets people to pay for that fast shipping has been undoubtedly shady.

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In 2023, the American Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon over its use of dark patterns,

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basically manipulative design tactics to deceive consumers into participating in Amazon Prime,

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which as you probably know, is a subscription service where shoppers pay monthly or yearly

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for faster shipping and other perks, like Luna Cloud Gaming. Prime Music? Watching rings of power

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with commercials. Although signing up for Prime isn't hard, trying to cancel a subscription or

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auto-renewal has been a very different story. According to the FTC, a user would have to go

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through four pages, six clicks, and 15 options to finally find the button to end their membership,

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unless you think this was just an innocuous case of poor design. The FTC also said Amazon

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internally called this process, Iliad Flow, with the Iliad being an ancient epic poem about the

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Trojan War that's over 110,000 words long. This name is a key piece of evidence in the lawsuit

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that indicates Amazon made the cancellation process deliberately lengthy and confusing.

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A practice also referred to as roach motelling, since you can check in, but you can never leave.

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Additionally, Amazon is also accused of pelting consumers with prompts to sign up for Prime

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while checking out on the site, but not clearly telling them that they were signing up for a

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recurring bill. Amazon has made things more straightforward since the initial accusations

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from the FTC, but it's not exactly like they can just tell the government, look, we fixed it,

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and get off scot free. The lawsuit is still pending in court with the FTC hoping to make

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an example out of Amazon. Finally, let's look at a company run by the kind of guy that everyone

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has some sort of opinion on, Elon Musk's Tesla. Like with Nintendo, there's arguably enough to

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do a full video here, but we're gonna focus on Tesla's full self-driving feature. Although FSD

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was somewhat controversial from the start due to the name, after all the car doesn't actually

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fully self-drive. The bigger issue was the way Tesla was happy to take customers' money for

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the future without actually delivering on what was promised. Starting in 2016, hell of a year,

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Tesla started taking orders for FSD, even though the future wasn't complete enough to be enabled

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at that time. However, consumers were led to believe that they'd be getting usable FSD

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sometime during the car's expected lifespan, especially as Tesla made the point to say that

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their vehicles were already capable of running FSD from a hardware standpoint, which turned out not

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to be completely true. Tesla drivers signed up for pre-orders partly because the company implied

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the price might go up in the future, and Elon Musk had made statements that FSD would be fully

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implemented within a few years. Unfortunately, Elon's track record of predictions surrounding FSD

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and Mars, and well, many things, have been dreadfully inaccurate, leading to accusations

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that he knowingly overpromised in order to sell more upgrades. Now, we're near the end of 2024,

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and shocker, FSD still isn't fully implemented, as the tech is still incapable of driving the car

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without the need for human intervention. Tesla's official documents even now append the word

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supervised, and warn that the future may not work as expected. But this isn't even the worst part,

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in our opinion. The cost of FSD rose as high as a whopping $15,000, but the company's baseline

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policy is not to allow owners to transfer that feature if they upgrade to a new Tesla,

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meaning that people have paid exorbitant sums for a feature that they've never been able to fully

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use, but officially have to say goodbye to that money if they want to upgrade to a newer model car.

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Now, to be fair, Tesla has offered opportunities to transfer FSD as special one-time amnesties,

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though in reality, they've had to do this multiple times, making FSD a little bit like

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the McRib of car technology. And the fact that Elon has called this program an amnesty,

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makes it seem like Tesla is somehow doing customers a favor, even though they never

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really gave customers what those customers paid for? We're out of time. But is there an outrageous

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incident from a tech company that you'd like us to rant about? Let us know in the comments,

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and you might see it in a follow-up episode. And if you'd like to learn about features and tech products that you've paid for but may not even be able to use, go watch this video next.