Amazon removed at least one book and censored others, emails show.
Top officials in President Joe Biden’s administration pressured Amazon to censor some books about COVID-19, according to newly disclosed emails.
“Who can we talk to about the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation of [sic] Amazon?” Andrew Slavitt, President Biden’s senior adviser for responding to COVID-19, wrote to Amazon on March 2, 2021, the tranche of missives shows.
Mr. Slavitt said in another message that officials had searched on Amazon for “vaccines.”
“I see what comes up. I haven’t looked beyond that, but if that’s what’s on the surface, it’s concerning,” he wrote.
Zach Butterworth, another White House official, told Amazon that he searched “vaccine” on Amazon and found a certain book, which he attached, as the top result.
“When I click on the product page I don’t see any CDC warning,” he added. CDC is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
That same day, internal Amazon emails show the company opted against carrying out “manual intervention” in response to the White House concerns because it would be “too visible” and “further compound the Harry/Sally narrative.”
Amazon removed Ryan T. Anderson’s book “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment” just weeks earlier, sparking a flood of negative stories, because it “frame[d] LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.”
The Amazon official said he or she had asked company employees to place a box directing people to the CDC’s website on more pages. The official said officials were considering tagging content with labels, like Facebook and Twitter do, but did not want to disclose that consideration to the White House “to avoid boxing in.”
Another internal email explained that Amazon did not specifically address content about vaccines in its guidelines and that Amazon, as a retailer, “provide our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable.”
White House officials later met with Amazon officials, although it’s unclear what was discussed in the meeting.
Among the questions the White House submitted ahead of the meeting was about a line in the Amazon guidelines that stated, “We do not allow descriptive content meant to mislead customers.”
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