Amazon Faces New Lawsuit Over Fire TV Sticks - Is Yours 'Bricked'?
Take a peek at the back of your television, and there's a chance an old Amazon Fire TV Stick is plugged in.
Haven't used it in a while? That might mean either you forgot about it or, like the plaintiffs in a new class action lawsuit, you intentionally called it quits after the device became laggy and unbearably slow.
Top Class Actions reported this week that Amazon is now facing a complaint alleging it intentionally rendered older Fire TV Stick devices unusable by discontinuing software support while continuing to market the products as offering "instant" streaming capabilities.
The lawsuit notes that Amazon promoted its first- and second-generation Fire TV Stick devices as providing instant access to hundreds of thousands of movies and shows across major streaming platforms - and that those advertised features were central to consumers' purchasing decisions.
Per Top Class Actions, the plaintiff alleges that Amazon later removed or limited critical software functionality, which cased the devices to become slow, difficult to use or effectively inoperable. The lawsuit describes this practice as "bricking," meaning the devices lost their primary functionality despite the hardware remaining intact.
Merewhuader stated that he purchased two second-generation Fire TV Stick devices in 2018 and began experiencing significant performance issues within a few years. He alleges the devices eventually became unusable, forcing him to purchase newer ones in 2024.
The lawsuit claims Amazon stopped providing software updates for first-generation devices in December 2022 and discontinued support for second-generation devices shortly thereafter, despite allegedly representing that support would continue through 2024.
Earlier this month, Top Class Actions also reported on another class action lawsuit faced by an entirely different mega-company. Google recently settled a $135 million suit to resolve claims that it used Android devices to transfer information to Google without user permission, consuming cellular data. Read more here.
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This story was originally published April 16, 2026 at 4:30 PM.