Amazon prominently touts work by anti-vaxxers and COVID conspiracy theorists, even after other platforms cut them off

Amazon prominently touts work by anti-vaxxers and COVID conspiracy theorists, even after other platforms cut them off

Books pushing COVID-19 and anti-vaxxer misinformation are displayed prominently on Amazon's US bookstore, making the site a haven for figures whom social-media platforms are increasingly banning. A review by Insider of pandemic-related terms on the store showed how deeply misleading titles continue to occupy the retailer's lucrative first page of search results. They continue to occupy prominent spots despite expert warnings that they lead to real-world harm. Strikingly, a book by one of the country's most censured misinformation profiteers, Dr Joseph Mercola, appeared as the top result in the search for both "COVID" and "vaccines" conducted by Insider. The searches were conducted with browsers in "incognito" mode and a deleted search history in order to limit the number of variables informing the results. Non-conspiracist books also get high search rankings. But they share space with misleading titles, including "Anyone Who Tells You Vaccines Are Safe and Effective is Lying." The results would seem to imply that questioning vaccine safety and the motives of those providing them is a mainstream position, when in fact it is almost entirely confined to fringe figures. "The concern is that Amazon gets to decide for the public what is relevant when they're searching for, say,