Amazon urged to curtail bad COVID information

Two federal lawmakers have requested that Amazon CEO Andy Jassy address concerns about the company’s role in pushing shoppers toward books and products that promote misinformation about the coronavirus.

Nearly 18 months into the pandemic, merchandise touting unproven COVID-19 remedies and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories continues to land near the top of Amazon.com’s search results for terms related to the disease, recent media reports have highlighted.

Amazon “cannot possibly justify the sale of false information that directly endangers your consumers,” wrote Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., in a Wednesday letter to Jassy, citing University of Washington research that found over 10% of vaccine-related search results on Amazon.com contained misinformation about vaccine efficacy and safety. Amazon’s search algorithms prioritize conspiracy theories, the researchers concluded: Books and merchandise promoting vaccine misinformation are among the first results shoppers see when they search for terms like “vaccine.”

And until recently, the first result for the search “COVID cure” on Amazon. com was a book about the drug ivermectin, commonly sold in concentrated form as a horse dewormer. The drug’s misuse to treat COVID-19 has sparked warnings from federal regulators amid a slew of calls to poison control centers from people who have overdosed on the potent formula.

Schiff echoed a call earlier this week from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., who asked Jassy to “perform an immediate review of Amazon’s algorithms” to determine to what extent they are pushing users toward misinformation.