Amazon Removed Anti-Vax Documentaries From Prime Video
Anti-vax documentaries have disappeared from search results on the platform, and appear to no longer be available to Prime members for free streaming. Amazon appears to have removed anti-vaccination documentaries from search results on Amazon Prime Video today, as well as from the catalog of videos included with its Prime service. On Friday morning, a search for "vaccines" on Amazon Prime Video returned top results for anti-vax documentaries, including Vaxxed and Shoot ‘Em Up: The Truth About Vaccines. But by Friday afternoon, those videos were no longer appearing in search results or available for streaming on the platform. Around noon Eastern Time, California Rep. Adam Schiff published an open letter to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos asking that Amazon reconsider allowing anti-vax content to appear on its website. "Amazon is surfacing and recommending products and content that discourage parents from vaccinating their children, a direct threat to public health, and reversing progress made in tackling vaccine-preventable diseases," Schiff’s letter reads. Po st w as generat ed by G SA Co nten t Gene rator DEMO!
Schiff had written similar letters to both Google, which owns YouTube, and Facebook, asking those platforms to address the anti-vax issue, in part because of the ongoing measles outbreak in Washington state. Following Schiff’s letter, YouTube banned advertising on some anti-vax videos and added additional information panels about vaccine hesitancy to anti-vax videos. Previously, the company announced via a blog post that it’s working to down-rank conspiracy theories in its "Up Next" recommendations. Facebook also says it’s "currently working on additional changes" to "reduce the distribution of health-related misinformation on Facebook," and will announce "additional changes" soon. All three of these anti-vax titles, which were accessible on Amazon Prime Video on Friday morning, are no longer available for streaming. In his letter, Schiff explicitly asked Amazon: "Does content which provides medically inaccurate information about vaccines violate your terms of service? " According to Amazon’s content policy guidelines for Prime Video, it bans "content that promotes, endorses, or incites the viewer to engage in dangerous or harmful acts." A spokesperson for Amazon Deals did not immediately respond to questions about whether that policy is related to the changes regarding anti-vax videos. Although anti-vax films like Man Made Epidemic that were previously accessible on Amazon Prime Video are no longer available to Prime members for free streaming, DVDs of that film (along with Vaxxed and Shoot ‘Em Up) can still be purchased. Another documentary that was removed from the free Prime bundle, The Greater Good, remains on the platform now requires a third-party channel subscription. This is a developing story. Check back for updates and follow BuzzFeed News on Twitter.
Internal documents reveal how a former aide to Joe Biden helped the tech giant build a lobbying juggernaut that has gutted legislation in two dozen states seeking to give consumers more control over their data. Filed Nov. 19, 2021, 11 a.m. Amazon executives and staffers detail these lobbying victories in confidential documents reviewed by Reuters. In Virginia, sneakers the company boosted political donations tenfold over four years before persuading lawmakers this year to pass an industry-friendly privacy bill that Amazon itself drafted. In California, the company stifled proposed restrictions on the industry’s collection and sharing of consumer voice recordings gathered by tech devices. And in its home state of Washington, Amazon won so many exemptions and amendments to a bill regulating biometric data, such as voice recordings or facial scans, that the resulting 2017 law had "little, if any" impact on its practices, according to an internal Amazon document. The architect of this under-the-radar campaign to smother privacy protections has been Jay Carney, who previously served as communications director for Joe Biden, when Biden was vice president, and as press secretary for President Barack Obama.
Hired by Amazon Deals in 2015, Carney reported to founder Jeff Bezos and built a lobbying and public-policy juggernaut that has grown from two dozen employees to about 250, according to Amazon documents and two former employees with knowledge of recent staffing. One 2018 document reviewing executives’ goals for the prior year listed privacy regulation as a primary target for Carney. One objective: "Change or block US and EU regulation/legislation that would impede growth for Alexa-powered devices," referring to Amazon’s popular voice-assistant technology. The mission included defeating restrictions on artificial intelligence and biometric technologies, along with blocking efforts to make companies disclose the data they keep on consumers. This story is based on a Reuters review of hundreds of internal Amazon documents and interviews with more than 70 lobbyists, advocates, policymakers and their staffers involved in legislation Amazon targeted, along with 10 former Amazon public-policy and shoedrop.shop legal employees. It is the third in a series of reports revealing how the company has pursued business practices that harm small businesses or put its own interests above those of consumers.
The previous articles showed how Amazon has circumvented e-commerce regulations meant to protect Indian retailers, and how it copied products and rigged search results to promote its own brands over those of other vendors on its India platform. In a statement, Amazon said: "The premise of this story is flawed and includes reporting that relies on early, incomplete drafts of documents to draw incorrect conclusions." The company said it protects consumers’ privacy and doesn’t sell their data. Amazon said the 2018 document listing Carney’s goals to defeat privacy regulation is "out-of-date" and does not reflect the company’s current public-policy objectives. The company said it has opposed "poorly crafted" state privacy bills. Amazon’s lobbying against privacy protections aims to preserve the company’s access to detailed consumer data that has fueled its explosive online-retailing growth and provided an advantage in emerging technologies, according to the Amazon documents and former employees. The data Amazon amasses includes Alexa voice recordings; videos from home-camera systems; personal health data from fitness trackers; and data on consumers’ web-searching and buying habits from its e-commerce business.
