THE AMAZON FILES – “feeling pressure from the White House”
Internal docs subpoenaed by @JudiciaryGOP & @Weaponization indicate that @amazon bowed down to Biden White House pressure to censor BOOKS.
🧵 Thread:
Never-before-released internal emails subpoenaed by @JudiciaryGOP reveal that the Biden White House pressured Amazon to censor books that expressed views the White House did not approve of.
“Is the [Biden] Admin asking us to remove books”?
Andy Slavitt—the senior Biden White House official who demanded that Facebook censor a meme and true information—was pressuring Amazon at the same time.
wsj.com/articles/faceb…
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?”
How did the Biden White House conclude that there was “propaganda and misinformation” in books sold in Amazon’s bookstore?
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:
Initially, Amazon decided to hold off on “doing a manual intervention” to censor books.
Why? Not out of any commitment to free speech, but because doing so would be “too visible” to the American public and likely to spur criticism from conservative media.
Why was the Biden White House so upset with Amazon?
Because Amazon believed “retailers are different than social media communities” & provided their “customers with access to a variety of viewpoints.”
For the Biden Admin, letting Americans think for themselves was unacceptable.
A week later, on March 9, 2021, Amazon met with the White House.
Internal Amazon documents reveal Amazon’s “top talking points” going into the meeting.
One of the key questions was whether the Biden White House wanted books banned or just buried deep in the search results:
So how did Amazon’s meeting with the Biden White House go?
On March 2, 2021, Amazon determined internally that it would “not be doing a manual intervention today.”
The online bookstore set a meeting with senior Biden White House officials for March 9, 2021.
What was the purpose of this meeting with the Biden White House?
To see if “the Admin is asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both)?”
Why did Amazon agree to take this meeting? Because they were “feeling pressure from the White House”
After the White House spent a week berating Amazon, what did the online bookstore do?
Starting March 9—the same day as its meeting with the White House—Amazon enabled “Do Not Promote” for books that expressed the view that vaccines were not effective.
And that wasn’t all. Amazon also considered other ways “to reduce the visibility” of certain books that the Biden White House disliked.
That’s right.
Amazon caved to the pressure from the Biden White House to censor speech.
@JudiciaryGOP and @Weaponization are investigating.
To be continued…
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