Federal Government Pressured Amazon to Suppress Books Containing ‘Misinformation’
Amazon bowed to federal pressure to suppress books containing “misinformation” regarding the COVID-19 vaccine, according to a review of emails obtained by the House Judiciary Committee.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman, Representative Jim Jordan, shared in a lengthy thread on X how the federal government pressured Amazon “to reduce the visibility” of certain books, particularly those that promoted “anti-vaccine” sentiments.
Andy Slavitt, a senior executive branch official, first sent an email to Amazon on March 2, 2021, demanding to be connected to someone within the company who could address his concerns regarding “the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation of [sic] Amazon?” Rep. Jordan also notes that Slavitt was also the official who “demanded that Facebook censor a meme and true information.”
“If you search for ‘vaccines’ under books, I see what comes up,” Salving sent in his March 2 email. “I haven’t looked beyond that, but if that’s what’s on the surface, it’s concerning. Happy to get briefed but want to understand the data when we do,” he added.
Rep. Jordan criticized the White House official’s process for sourcing the so-called “controversial topics” featured on Amazon, writing on X that Slavitt “ran keyword searches” and “emailed Amazon when [he] didn’t like how the search results appeared.”
According to internal Amazon staff emails subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee, Amazon employees felt “pressure” from federal officials to burry “anti-vax books,” but initially said that they would “not be doing a manual intervention,” noting that the “PR [team] feels very strongly that it is too visible” to the public. “I’ve asked the team to widen the search light flag for COVID-19 CDC website re-direct so that it comes to the top of the page,” one Amazon staffer wrote in an email to employees, adding, “The [White House] will probably ask why we don’t tag the content like [Facebook]/Twitter do if we aren’t taking it down.”
“We believe that retailers are different than social media communities which means we review the content we make available, where we make it available in our store, and how we address content that customers find disappointing,” one Amazon employee wrote in an email. “As a retailer, we provide our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable.”
At the time, Amazon employees had begun strategizing for a meeting with the White House scheduled for March 9, 2021. One employee openly asked in preparation, “Is the [a]dmin asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both)?”
Immediately following the meeting, however, Amazon enabled its “Do Not Promote” for “books that expressed the view that vaccines were not effective,” according to Rep. Jordan. According to the U.S. Representative, Amazon also considers ways it could “reduce the visibility” of certain books.
The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed Slavitt on November 30, 2023, to “conduct[ ] oversight of how and to what extent the Executive Branch has coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech.”
The committee said that it had “obtained documents that demonstrate the central role [Slavitt] played” in “censorship efforts.”
Amazon has not yet publicly commented on the new revelations.
