At the behest of the White House, Amazon implemented measures to censor books critical of the COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic, internal documents show.
Emails posted to X last week by House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) revealed that White House officials were bothered by search results on Amazon for books on “vaccines” because the results included books challenging the safety and efficacy of the COVID-19 shots.
In one email dated March 2, 2021, then-White House corporate liaison Zach Butterworth sounded the alarm about unfavorable books appearing in the search results for “vaccine.” Butterworth was troubled that such books did not at least come with warning labels from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Then-Senior Advisor to the White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Andrew Slavitt responded that this was “concerning.”
That same day, an email between Amazon employees titled “Books Vaccine Misinformation Policy_020821” showed the company was reluctant to conduct a “manual intervention” to remove the books because it was “too visible,” and executives feared negative publicity from news outlets like Fox News. Instead, the company altered the search algorithm so that books which confirmed the CDC’s narrative on vaccines would show first, while those containing “vaccine misinformation” would show last.
The Amazon employees acknowledged that this strategy “won’t be satisfactory” to the White House.
“The WH will probably ask why we don’t tag the content like FB/Twitter do if we aren’t taking it down. That is an option being explored but that we don’t want to disclose to avoid boxing in,” an employee wrote.
A week later Amazon executives met with White House officials to discuss the matter. More internal Amazon emails show the company was “feeling pressure from the White House” to either “reduce visibility” of the books or remove them altogether. One executive also anticipated that “Buzzfeed will run a negative story looking at Covid-19 related books for sale on Amazon.”
An email three days later revealed that Amazon removed at least one book which “was found to violate our COVID policy.” The company also added a back-end feature called Do Not Promote which limited the reach of “anti-vax books whose primary purpose is to persuade readers vaccines are unsafe or ineffective.”
“For the Biden Admin, letting Americans think for themselves was unacceptable,” commented Rep. Jim Jordan.
