We need to support organizations holding Amazon accountable for not removing Holocaust denial products.

#NeverAgainAmazon

The above graphic was created by the official #NeverAgainAmazon campaign. Please feel free to copy and share it to your personal social media.

In December 2021, I realized in a bit of a blind panic that I did not have a menorah. We were one week out from Chanukah and I was living in a small town in the middle of nowhere with no Jewish community in sight. Similar to the time I tried to order Matzah over the internet to Hyderabad, India, I turned to Amazon to hopefully save the day. While I did find a menorah, I was amazed at how by the time I hit the second page of products, my search was bringing up books on why Hitler was right. 

As a result of this experience, it came as little surprise to me when earlier this week B’nai Brith, Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, and Liberation75 launched the #NeverAgainAmazon campaign to push the online retailer to remove the hateful content. In their media release, the organizations highlighted the availability of prints, posters, stickers, and beachwear featuring images of concentration camp survivors, Hitler, and other material that trivializes the memory of the Holocaust. The organizations argue that by allowing these items to be sold on their platform, Amazon is violating its own guidelines which disallow the sale of hateful items. Amazon is yet to respond to the complaints of the organizations. 

The question of liability for Amazon and other online retailers when they allow hateful products, particularly ones that trivialize the Holocaust or glorify Hitler is one that I have often wondered about.

Amazon’s Guidelines

Amazon’s guidelines state: “Our offensive products policy prohibits the sale of products that promote, incite, or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual, or religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views, as well as listings that graphically portray violence or victims of violence.” Though they claim to engage in frequent reviews and to be continually scraping their platform for this content, it does not take much work to find it in somewhat of an abundance on the platform. 

It is easy to lean in to providing Amazon with slack on this issue. After all, they are a massive company with millions of products available for sale and countless new listings being posted daily. This is the same excuse we so often hear applied to social media companies and other online platforms when they fail to address hateful and even violent content on their platforms. But we shouldn’t be letting them off this easily. 

Amazon averages a net revenue of over $11 billion annually (this more than doubled at the height of the pandemic but appears to have since returned to normal). Given the amount the company earns, I personally find it difficult to let them off the hook for not doing more, be it improving their scraping algorithms or hiring more staff, to address and remove products that directly violate their own guidelines. 

Section 230

The next big question for me, and one that remains up in the air before the court, is whether Amazon is protected by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Section 230 creates an exemption from liability for those providing an “interactive computer service” from being considered to be a publisher of the content on their platform. The purpose of this provision was to safeguard the free speech rights of newspapers to publish critical and controversial pieces, and has since been expanded and relied upon by social media companies such as Facebook and Twitter to exempt themselves from liability. This does not prevent platforms from creating their own private terms of use, as most have done, to prevent hate speech and other problematic content. It does, however, provide them with some leeway when they fail to uphold and enforce these terms.

While it is possible that the question of whether and to what extent Amazon is insulated from liability by section 230 will be answered in the ongoing legal battle with Parler, at present it remains an open question as to whether organizations like three behind the #NeverAgainAmazon campaign will be able to hold Amazon accountable for products published to its platform. If Amazon were to be able to rely on section 230 as a defence, this should further indicate the need to have a serious discussion about the breadth of interpretation of this provision.

Timing

Setting aside the policy and legal questions that arise around Amazon’s failure to remove these items from its platform, it is necessary to look at this situation in light of the current cultural context. 

Antisemitism is on the rise. If you are a regular reader, then you will be aware that I have been among those sounding the alarm bells for several years. And as we approach International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, I want to prompt you to think about some statistics: 

• In a 50-state survey: 

  • 1 in 10 adults under 40 could not recall ever having heard the word “Holocaust” 

  • 63% of Millennials and Gen-Z did not know 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and over half believed the number was less than 2 million

  • 45% could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto 

  • 7% of respondents were unsure whether the Holocaust happened and 3% were certain that it had not 

• In Canada: 

  • 22% of respondents under 34 could not recall having heard of the Holocaust

  • 49% could not name a single concentration camp or ghetto 

  • 23% of Canadians believe substantially fewer than 2 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust 

  • 24% are unsure how many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust 

We cannot afford to trivialize or take for granted knowledge of the Holocaust. It may seem reactionary to go after Amazon for allowing products that do this to remain on its platform, but when we consider the broader context of the state of Holocaust awareness the urgency of addressing the situation should become clear why this cannot be ignored any longer. 

As we approach International Holocaust Remembrance Day, if you have a story of a loved one that you would like to share, I would be happy to provide a platform for you to do that, so that we can continue to keep the memory of the Holocaust and those we lost alive. To share a story you can reply directly to this email, or reach out to me via social media on Instagram @horseofadifferent_colour or Twitter @sadie_rw. Any stories I receive will be shared on January 27th.