Criticism of Amazon
Amazon has been criticized on many issues, including anti-competitive business practices, its treatment of workers, offering counterfeit or plagiarized products, objectionable content of its books, and its tax and subsidy deals with governments.
[16][17] According to deputy commissioner for deceptive marketing practices Josephine Palumbo, Amazon.ca was required by the Canadian Competition Bureau to pay a $1 million penalty and $100,000 in costs for failing to provide "truth in advertising".
[30] On August 11, 2014, Amazon removed the option to pre-order Captain America: The Winter Soldier to control the online pricing of Disney films; the company had used similar tactics with Warner Bros.
Many Holocaust survivors are deeply offended by the fact that the world's largest online retailer is making money from selling such material," WJC executive vice-president Robert Singer wrote in a letter to Bezos.
"[95] Wired journalist Louise Matsakis called the Holocaust-themed products "the byproduct of an increasingly automated e-commerce landscape", noting that the items were print-on-demand and Amazon became aware of them after offended customers reported their sale.
[123] In the wake of the WSJ investigation, three U.S. senators – Richard Blumenthal, Ed Markey, and Bob Menendez – sent an open letter to Bezos demanding action against the sale of unsafe items on the site: "Unquestionably, Amazon is falling short of its commitment to keeping safe those consumers who use its massive platform.
Goodreads and Google Books often retain metadata for counterfeits and plagiarized titles after Amazon removes them from its sales platforms, which leads to improper author attribution, ambiguity and reader confusion.
Rachel Ann Nunes, a writer of Mormon fiction, said in an interview for The Atlantic that emotional stress and reputation damage were even worse than the financial implications of her books being plagiarized: "I felt like I was being attacked ... and when I went on social media, I didn’t know what would be waiting for me."
She cited the use of pen names as a problem and agreed with Jonathan Bailey that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act shields Amazon too much from liability for plagiarism or illegal material in published books.
[161][162] The New York Times reported in July 2009 that amazon.com had deleted all customer copies of books published in violation of US copyright laws by MobileReference,[163] including Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, from users' Kindles.
[167][168] Amazon later said that it had no policy of de-ranking lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender material, blaming the change first on a "glitch"[169] and then on "an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error" affecting 57,310 books;[170] a hacker claimed responsibility for the metadata loss.
[176] Amazon later pulled self-published titles promoting autism-related anti-vaccination theories from its sales platforms, which Lindsey Bever of The Washington Post said bordered on censorship of legal reading material.
[182] Anti-vaccination and non-evidence-based cancer "cures" have appeared in Amazon books and videos, possibly due to positive reviews posted by supporters of untested methods or gaming of algorithms by truthers.
[257] On Black Friday in 2018, Amazon warehouse workers in several European countries (including Italy, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom) went on strike to protest inhumane working conditions and low pay.
[263] In November 2019, NBC reported that some contracted Amazon locations, against company policy, allowed people to make deliveries using the badges and passwords of others to circumvent employee background checks and avoid financial penalties (or termination) for sub-standard performance.
[265] GMB has continued to raise concerns about "grueling conditions, unrealistic productivity targets, surveillance, bogus self-employment and a refusal to recognise or engage with unions unless forced", calling for the UK government and safety regulators to address these issues.
We have no ventilation, dusty, dirty fans that spread debris into our lungs and eyes, are working at a non-stop pace and [we] are fainting out from heat exhaustion, getting nose bleeds from high blood pressure, and feeling dizzy and nauseous."
[277][278] A 2021 report by the National Employment Law Project found that working conditions at Amazon fulfillment centers in Minnesota were dangerous and unsustainable, with more than double the rate of injuries compared to non-Amazon warehouses from 2018 to 2020.
[306] Derrick Palmer, another worker at the Staten Island facility, told The Verge that Amazon quickly communicates through text and email when they need staff to work mandatory overtime but waited days to tell employees when a colleague contracted the disease.
[307] On May 4, Amazon vice president Tim Bray resigned "in dismay" over the firing of whistleblowers who spoke out about the lack of COVID-19 protections, including shortages of face masks and the company's failure to implement promised temperature checks.
On April 15, 2020, the district court in Nanterre ordered the company to limit its deliveries to essential items (including electronics, food, medical or hygienic products, and supplies for home improvement, animals, and offices) or face a fine of €1 million per day.
[323] In April 2022, The Intercept reported that Amazon's planned internal messaging app would ban words (such as "union", "living wage", "freedom", "pay raise" and "restrooms") which might indicate worker unhappiness.
[333] According to The New York Times, "Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, an independent of Connecticut, said Amazon had stopped hosting the WikiLeaks site on Wednesday after being contacted by the staff of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee".
Rin Chupeco, a popular fantasy novelist, has raised concerns that Goodreads leaves moderation primarily in the hands of volunteers with editing privileges and authors marginalized by race, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation are often targets.
Alyssa Bereznak wrote for The Ringer in 2019, "Last week, HBO’s Chernobyl shot to the top of IMDb’s all-time TV rankings, outperforming other mega-popular hits like Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and various stoner-friendly seasons of Planet Earth.
The Economist ran with the numbers, comparing them to traffic spikes on the "Chernobyl nuclear disaster" Wikipedia page, declaring the show 'the highest-rated TV series ever', and marveling at the reach of its subject matter."
Bereznak said that the ratings were primarily by white male users, noting earlier trolling scandals where media with largely female, racialized casts and crew were ranked lower in a form of review manipulation (particularly if the content was political).
[377][378] Kate Erbland wrote for IndieWire that the film-aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes experienced the same type of trolling as IMDb for the 2018 Disney film A Wrinkle in Time, which had an ethnically-diverse cast (including Oprah Winfrey).
"[418][419] On July 7, 2019, Make the Road New York and local leaders connected with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice led a protest by over 1,000 people in response to Amazon's financial ties to Palantir and its $150 million in contracts with the U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE).
The lawsuit, which alleged fraud, breach of contract and violation of her private life and consumer rights, said that after joining IMDbPro in 2008 to increase her chances of getting roles, Hoang said that her date of birth had been added to her public profile; she is older than she looks, and received less acting work and earnings.
