Update: Amazon Bowed to White House Pressure to Suppress Books Skeptical of COVID-19 Vaccines

Amazon yielded to pressure from President Joe Biden’s White House to suppress books that opposed COVID-19 vaccines, according to documents reviewed by The Daily Signal.

The House Judiciary Committee obtained the emails, which demonstrate the White House’s pressure on Amazon to suppress “anti-vax books” and the company’s decision to take action against the books.

Amazon employees strategized for a meeting with the White House on March 9, 2021, openly asking whether the administration wanted the retailer to remove books from its catalog.

“Is the [a]dmin asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both)?” one employee wrote.

On March 2, 2021, Slavitt complained to Amazon staff that “If you search for ‘vaccines’ under books, I see what comes up.”

“I haven’t looked beyond that, but if that’s what’s on the surface, it’s concerning,” he added.

Amazon decided that the company would not do a “manual intervention” on March 3, noting that a move against books expressing hesitancy on COVID-19 vaccines might undermine the company.

“The team/[public relations] feels very strongly that it is too visible, and will further compound the Harry/Sally narrative (which is getting the Fox News treatment today apparently), and won’t fix the problem long-term problem [sic] because of the customer behavior associations,” the Amazon staffer wrote.

The “Harry/Sally narrative” refers to Amazon’s controversial decision to remove “When Harry Became Sally,” Ryan T. Anderson’s book on the transgender movement, in February 2021. Amazon said the book violated its content policy. Anderson serves as president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and had previously served as a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)

The Amazon employee had moved to “widen the search light flag for COVID-19 [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] website re-direct so that it comes to the top of the page on more search keys,” however.

The staffer added that the White House will likely not consider any explanation of Amazon’s decisions “satisfactory.”

“The WH will probably ask why we don’t tag the content like FB/Twitter do if we aren’t taking it down,” the staffer wrote.

After the March 9 meeting at the White House, Amazon staff strategized how to respond to a negative story that Buzzfeed would publish discussing “COVID-19 related books for sale on Amazon.” Staff noted that they were “feeling pressure from the White House Taskforce” on the issue of books “related to vaccine misinformation.”

In this discussion, a staffer noted that “we did enable Do Not Promote for anti-vax books whose primary purpose is to persuade readers vaccines are unsafe or ineffective on 3/9, and will review additional handling options for these books with you, [redacted], and [redacted] on 3/19.”

That March 9 decision to change Amazon’s algorithm to avoid promoting “anti-vax books” appears to have happened after the meeting with White House staff.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/05/exclusive-amazon-bowed-white-house-pressure-suppress-books-skeptical-covid-19-vaccine

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