Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan revealed on X that the White House was directly involved in the censorship campaign. That includes a 2021 email from one Biden official asking to discuss “the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation of [sic] Amazon?”
Amazon in turn appears to ask only how high the Biden White House wants it to jump on censorship: “[i]s the [Biden] Admin asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both)?”
After the meeting, Amazon confirmed in an email that it was actively doing what the government demanded in suppressing sales by not promoting disfavored books: “As a reminder, 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.”
This effort notably parallels demands from Democratic leaders who have called for enlightened algorithms to frame what citizens access on the internet. In 2021, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) objected that people were not listening to the informed views of herself and leading experts. Instead, they were reading views of skeptics by searching Amazon and finding books by “prominent spreaders of misinformation.”
etc
It depresses me to see so many conservative / patriot websites flogging stuff through "Amazon Affiliate" links. Stop it, y'all! Gotta starve that beast!
I understand the sentiment, but if every single person on this site stops buying and promoting books on Amazon, it will make no difference whatsoever to Amazon's -- of Jeff's -- bottom line.
It will, however, slightly reduce the ranking of those books in Amazon's search function.
Neither will probably make any difference in the real world. Amazon must be taken down or reformed -- in particular, censorship of important topics must stop -- but it won't happen because frogs boycott them.