For a decade, plenty of checkout and subscription teams treated dark patterns as a growth tactic with an acceptable risk profile: pre-check the upsell, bury the cancel link, add the fee on the last screen. That math changed twice in the last year. Amazon paid $2.5 billion over its Prime enrollment and cancellation flow. Adobe paid $150 million over buried termination fees and a convoluted cancel process. Neither company is a small operator gambling on nobody noticing. If it happened to them, the pattern you copied from a "10 checkout hacks" listicle is not hiding from anyone.
Dark patterns in checkout and subscription flows moved from a UX debate to a legal liability in 2026. Adobe paid $150 million in March for burying cancellation fees and silently converting trials, five months after Amazon's $2.5 billion Prime settlement over the same category of design. The fix that avoids both the fine and the churn is usually the same one: say the price and the exit clearly, before the customer has to ask.
What actually happened, in order
On September 25, 2025, the FTC settled its lawsuit against Amazon two days into trial. The agency's complaint said Amazon used a prominent "Get FREE Delivery with Prime" button at checkout that enrolled shoppers in a $14.99 a month subscription they did not clearly agree to, and that the cancellation flow was built with a different goal than cancellation: as the FTC put it, the process existed "not to enable subscribers to cancel, but to stop them." Amazon agreed to a $1 billion civil penalty and $1.5 billion in refunds to roughly 35 million affected customers.
Six months later, on March 13, 2026, the Department of Justice announced a $150 million settlement with Adobe, on a referral from the FTC. The allegation: Adobe hid Creative Cloud early termination fees, in some cases hundreds of dollars, behind hyperlinks and small text boxes, and made the cancellation process itself deliberately convoluted, with warnings designed to make customers give up partway through. Adobe will pay a $75 million civil penalty and provide $75 million in free services, and under the settlement must disclose termination fees before signup, warn customers before a free trial longer than seven days converts to paid, and offer a genuinely simple way to cancel.
Both cases were brought under the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act, or ROSCA, a law that predates most of the dark pattern debate and does not care whether your team called the tactic a "growth hack" internally. If your conversion program includes anything that resembles either case, that is worth a hard look this quarter, not next year's audit cycle.
What counts as a dark pattern in a checkout or subscription flow
Regulators and researchers use slightly different taxonomies, but in a commerce or SaaS funnel the recurring categories are consistent: hiding true cost until late in the flow, defaulting the customer into something they did not choose, making the exit harder to find than the entrance, and using copy or visual weight to pressure a decision rather than inform one. The FTC's own international review with ICPEN and other regulators examined 642 subscription websites and apps in early 2024 and found that roughly three in four used at least one likely dark pattern, and two in three used more than one. This is not a fringe practice. It is closer to the industry default, which is exactly why enforcement has become the story.
| Pattern | Real enforcement example | What to run instead |
|---|---|---|
| Enrollment via a disguised call to action | Amazon: a "get free delivery" button silently started a $14.99/month Prime subscription | State the price and billing cadence next to the button, not after checkout completes |
| Cancellation buried behind extra screens or phone-only support | Amazon: FTC said the flow's real purpose was to stop cancellation, not enable it | Cancel in the same number of clicks as signup, no phone requirement for an online purchase |
| Hidden or buried early termination fees | Adobe: fees "in the hundreds of dollars" hidden behind hyperlinks and small text | Disclose the fee amount and how it is calculated before the customer signs up |
| Free trial converts to paid without warning | Adobe settlement now requires a reminder before any trial over 7 days converts | Email or in-app reminder 3 to 7 days out, with a one-click cancel option included |
| Confirmshaming exit copy ("No thanks, I like paying more") | Named repeatedly in the FTC/ICPEN 2024 international dark patterns review | Neutral decline copy, same visual weight as the accept option |
| Fees added only at the final checkout step | Core complaint across FTC hidden-fee actions and state all-in pricing statutes | Show the full price, required fees included, at the first price display |
Does removing dark patterns actually hurt conversion?
This is the objection every CRO lead has heard in a stakeholder meeting: strip out the pre-checked box or the buried cancel link and the numbers will fall. In our experience running checkout and funnel optimization for clients, the pattern is usually the opposite once you look past the signup line on the dashboard. A dark pattern inflates the top of the funnel, an enrollment or a signup, while quietly loading cost onto the bottom: chargebacks, refund requests, one-star reviews, support tickets, and customers who cancel their card rather than cancel the subscription because that felt easier. None of that shows up in the A/B test result that declared the variant a winner after two weeks.
The pattern shows up in the pricing research too, even outside the legal angle. Our own coverage of all-in pricing laws found that showing the full price earlier in the funnel tends to convert as well as or better than drip pricing once you measure all the way to completed order, because customers who make it to the final screen already know what they owe and do not bounce at the surprise. Simple, honest checkout copy is not a compliance tax on conversion. Most of the time it is the same recommendation a good CRO audit would have made anyway.
Run a real audit before a regulator or a plaintiff's firm does. Walk your signup flow and your cancellation flow side by side and count the clicks, screens and required fields in each. If cancellation takes more steps than signup, that gap is your highest-risk item and usually your cheapest fix. We treat this as a standard line item in checkout reviews now, not an extra.
Where the law actually stands right now
It is a messier picture than "dark patterns are now illegal," so it is worth being precise. The FTC's broad federal click-to-cancel rule, formally the Negative Option Rule update, was vacated by the Eighth Circuit in 2025 over a procedural defect in how the FTC adopted it, days before the compliance deadline. It is not currently in force nationwide. The FTC responded by reopening rulemaking: it published an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in the Federal Register on March 13, 2026, with the comment period closing April 13, 2026, so a revised federal rule is still in progress rather than settled. A narrower, older negative option rule remains in effect regardless. And as the Amazon and Adobe cases show, none of that gap has stopped enforcement under ROSCA and Section 5 of the FTC Act, which do not require the vacated rule to apply. Add state-level rules like NYC's click-to-cancel ordinance and the state price-transparency laws covered in our all-in pricing piece, and the safest assumption for any US-facing checkout is that a simple, honest flow is required in more places than it is optional.
What to check in your own funnel this week
- List every checked-by-default box in your checkout, account creation and upsell steps. If it adds a cost or a subscription, it should start unchecked.
- Time how long it takes a test account to cancel versus how long it took to sign up. Parity is the target.
- Find every fee that appears for the first time on the final screen and move its disclosure to the first price mention, matching the approach in our checkout form field recommendations.
- Read your free trial and renewal emails as a customer would. If there is no reminder before a card is charged, add one.
- Audit exit-intent and cancel-flow copy for confirmshaming language and swap it for neutral wording.
Frequently asked questions
What are dark patterns in checkout and subscription flows?
Dark patterns are interface choices designed to get a purchase, signup or renewal a reasonable person would not have chosen with clear information. In checkout this usually means hidden fees revealed late, pre-checked add-ons, cancellation buried behind extra steps or a phone call, and free trials that convert to paid without a clear warning.
Why did Adobe pay $150 million over its cancellation flow?
The Department of Justice, acting on an FTC referral, alleged Adobe violated ROSCA by hiding early termination fees, sometimes hundreds of dollars, behind hyperlinks and small text, and by making Creative Cloud cancellation deliberately convoluted. Adobe settled in March 2026 for $75 million in penalties and $75 million in free services, and must now disclose fees upfront and simplify cancellation.
Is the FTC's click-to-cancel rule in effect in 2026?
The broad federal click-to-cancel rule was vacated by the Eighth Circuit in 2025 over a rulemaking procedure defect, so it is not in force nationally. The FTC reopened rulemaking with an ANPRM published in March 2026. A narrower, older negative option rule still applies, and ROSCA enforcement has continued regardless, as the Adobe and Amazon cases show.
Are pre-checked checkboxes at checkout illegal?
Not automatically, but they are a named pattern in FTC and international dark pattern reviews and a common feature in enforcement actions when they add a paid subscription, warranty or membership without a clear, separate opt-in. The safer design asks for an active choice on anything that adds cost, rather than defaulting the box to checked.
Does removing dark patterns hurt conversion rates?
Usually not at the level that matters. Dark patterns tend to inflate signups or short-term revenue while increasing chargebacks, refund requests, support load and churn. Transparent pricing and simple cancellation reduce disputes and repeat-purchase drop-off, which is a better trade for most subscription and ecommerce businesses than a slightly higher raw signup number.
What should we test instead of dark patterns?
Test the honest version of the same idea: show the full price including fees at first display instead of at the last step, send a reminder before a trial converts instead of staying silent, and make cancellation match signup in number of steps. These changes are cheap to build and defend the business against enforcement risk at the same time.
The takeaway
Two of the biggest software and ecommerce companies in the country just paid a combined $2.65 billion for checkout and cancellation design that plenty of smaller sites still run without a second thought. The rules the FTC wants in place at the federal level are still being rewritten, but the enforcement tool that caught Amazon and Adobe, ROSCA, was never in doubt and is not going anywhere. Audit your funnel like a regulator will read it, because increasingly, one might.