Amazon began limiting the visibility of certain vaccine books soon after the White House outreach.
In early 2021, the Biden White House sent a series of emails to Amazon pressuring the online retailer to suppress the distribution of books that cast vaccines in a negative light. The administration was ultimately successful in its efforts: Amazon began limiting the visibility of titles that cast doubt on vaccine efficacy soon after hearing from the White House.
The internal Amazon emails, provided to the House Judiciary Committee in response to a subpoena, reveal that White House senior adviser for Covid-19 response Andrew Slavitt concluded that the retail giant was trafficking in “misinformation” after conducting a cursory search on the topic of vaccines.
“Who can we talk to about the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation of [sic] Amazon?” Slavitt asked an Amazon representative in an email dated March 2, 2021.
“If you search for ‘vaccines’ under books, I see what comes up,” Slavitt wrote in a follow-up email. “I haven’t looked beyond that but if that’s what’s on the surface, it’s concerning.”
Amazon initially held off on censoring any books, citing concerns that doing so would be “too visible” and grab the attention of conservative media outlets.
“We will not be doing a manual intervention today,” an email among Amazon executives reads. “The team/PR 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 . . . because of customer behavior associates.”
Before answering Slavitt, Amazon brainstormed potential responses to his inquiry. Defending its book-selling practices, the company said “retailers are different than social media communities” and that, as an online retailer, it provides “customers with access to a variety of viewpoints” on various topics, including vaccines.
“Our guidelines do not specifically address content about vaccines,” another response reads.
Amazon met with the White House a week later, on March 9, 2021, after executives admitted in an internal email that they were “feeling pressure” from White House officials.
The company’s “top talking points” for the meeting included whether the White House wanted books banned or buried in the search results.
“Is the Admin asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both)?” a company email states.
On the same day of the meeting, Amazon enabled a new “Do Not Promote” policy for anti-vaccine books and considered other avenues “to reduce the visibility” of certain titles.
“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,” another internal email states.
In an internal email sent three days after the White House meeting, an Amazon executive mentions that they “anticipate that Buzzfeed will run a negative story look at Covid-19 related books on Amazon.” Three days later, Buzzfeed published an article critical of Amazon under the headline, “Amazon Is Pushing Readers Down ‘A Rabbit Hole’ of Conspiracies about The Coronavirus.”
Representative Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), who chairs the Judiciary Committee and its subcommittee on the weaponization of government, said both panels will continue to investigate the matter and teased there will be more information to come. “To be continued,” he said.
The White House’s efforts to steer Amazon’s behavior closely resemble the approach it took to pressuring Facebook to crack down on alleged Covid “misinformation.” Internal emails obtained by the Judiciary Committee reveal that White House officials pushed Facebook executives to censor and suppress vaccine-skeptical information on the platform in the summer of 2021. Like Amazon, Facebook tightened some of its content-moderation policies after the outreach.
National Review has requested comment from Amazon and the White House.