It has been revealed that Amazon censored books critical of Covid-19 vaccines at the behest of the Biden administration.
The findings were uncovered by the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, and relayed to the public via X by Chairman Jim Jordan.
“Never-before-released internal emails subpoenaed by [Judiciary Committee] reveal that the Biden White House pressured Amazon to censor books that expressed views the White House did not approve of,” Jordan wrote.
The demands were made by a senior Biden official named Andy Slavitt.
Jordan explained that on March 2, 2021, Slavitt “fired off an email demanding to know who he and his White House colleagues could talk to at the company about ‘the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation of [sic] Amazon?’.”
He revealed that in order to weed out books it considered “propaganda and misinformation,” the White House “ran keyword searches for controversial topics, such as ‘vaccine,’ and emailed Amazon when it didn’t like how the search results appeared.”
Amazon, he added, was initially apprehensive, but only because it would be “too visible” to Americans and cause a fuss in conservative media.
The commerce giant met with the Biden administration on March 9, 2021 to find out whether they should remove the books entirely or just bury them in the search results.
After “feeling pressure” from government officials, Amazon enabled “Do Not Promote” on titles promoting skepticism of vaccines, and began considering other ways to restrict their visibility.