How Amazon became an engine for anti-vaccine conspiracy theories

Search for “vaccines” on Amazon’s bookstore, and a banner encourages shoppers to “learn more” about COVID-19, with a link to the Centers for Disease Control. But the text almost vanishes amid the eye-catching book covers spreading out below, many of which carry Amazon’s orange “bestseller” badge. One top-ranked book that promises “the other side of the story” of vaccine science is #1 on Amazon’s list for “Health Policy.” Next to it, smiling infants grace the cover of the top-selling book in “Teen Health,” co-authored by an Oregon pediatrician whose license was suspended last year over an approach to vaccinations that placed “many of his patients at serious risk of harm.” Anyone Who Tells You That Vaccines Are Safe and Effective Is Lying , by a prominent English conspiracy theorist, promises “the facts about vaccination — so that you can make up your own mind.” There are no warning notices or fact checks—studies have shown no link between vaccines and autism, for instance—but there are over 1,700 five-star ratings and a badge: the book is #1 on Amazon’s list for “Children’s Vaccination & Immunization.” Offered by small publishers or self-published through Amazon’s platform, the books rehearse the falsehoods and conspiracy theories that fuel vaccine opposition, steepening the impact of the pandemic and slowing a global recovery. They also illustrate how the world’s biggest store has become a megaphone for anti-vaccine activists, medical misinformers, and conspiracy theorists, pushing dangerous falsehoods in a medium that carries more apparent legitimacy than just a tweet. “Without question, Amazon is one of the greatest single promoters of anti-vaccine disinformation, and the world leader in pushing fake anti-vaccine and COVID-19 conspiracy books,” says Peter Hotez, a pediatrician and vaccine expert at the Baylor College of Medicine. For years, journalists and researchers have warned of the ways fraudsters, extremists, and conspiracy theorists use Amazon to earn cash and attention. To Hotez, who has devoted much of his career to educating the public about vaccines, the real-world consequences aren’t academic. In the US and elsewhere, he says, vaccination efforts are now up against a growing ecosystem of activist groups, foreign manipulators, and digital influencers who “peddle fake books on Amazon.” Anti-vaccine titles dominate search results for “vaccines”; the first autocomplete suggestion is “vaccines are dangerous” (Amazon) Letting the truth loose The Seattle giant is known for a relatively minimalist approach to policing content. The goal, founder Jeff Bezos said in 1998, was “to make every book available—the good, the bad and the ugly.” Customer reviews would “let truth loose.” Amazon’s algorithms and recommendation boxes would make it a place where, as it says on its website, “customers can find everything they need and want.” These days, they can publish everything they want, too: Amazon’s self-publishing platforms allow authors to make paper books, audio books, or e-books. The latter, Amazon says , “takes less than five minutes and your book appears on Kindle stores worldwide within 24–48 hours.” Gradually, Amazon has taken a tougher approach to content moderation, and to a seemingly ceaseless onslaught of counterfeits, fraud, defective products, and toxic speech. The company says its automated and human reviewers now evaluate thousands of products a day to ensure they abide by its offensive content policies . For books, its prohibitions are brief and vague: material “that we determine is hate speech, promotes the abuse or sexual exploitation of children, contains pornography, glorifies rape or pedophilia, advocates terrorism, or other material we deem inappropriate or offensive.” Sometimes that includes health misinformation. In 2019, the company removed a number of titles that connected autism to vaccines after Rep. Adam Schiff wrote to Bezos to say he was concerned Amazon was “surfacing and recommending products and content that discourage parents from vaccinating their children,” citing “strong evidence” that vaccine misinformation had helped fuel a deadly measles epidemic in Washington that year. After the start of the pandemic, Amazon removed over one million fraudulent products related to COVID-19, including “cures” like herbal treatments, prayer healing, and vitamin supplements. It also pulled an unknown number of books that pushed pandemic conspiracy theories, and added banners linking customers to credible information for some search terms. January 6 led to another purge across Big Tech, and Amazon also pulled alt-right and QAnon merchandise for breaking its rules on hate speech. Later that month, it removed dozens of books promoting Holocaust denial, and finally removed the white supremacist novel The Turner Diaries . It even banned Parler from its cloud service, citing the right-wing social network’s lax content moderation. Despite its sweeps, however, Amazon is still flooded with misinformation, and helping amplify it too: A series of recent studies and a review by Fast Company show the bookstore is boosting misinformation around health-related terms like “autism” or “covid,” and nudging customers toward a universe of other conspiracy theory books. Read More …

5 great Google Photos alternatives now that unlimited storage is gone

Well, friends, it’s finally happened. Google’s free, unlimited photo-storage train has pulled into the station and won’t be making any more stops. We had a good run. Whether you’re adamantly opposed to paying for photo storage or you’re simply looking to try something new, here are other photo-storage apps to check out—including both free options and reasonably-priced for-pay ones. Why not stay a while? OK, a bit on the whole Google thing. Yes, free unlimited photo storage is done. But the photos and videos you’ve already uploaded to the service are grandfathered in. So there’s no rush to just rip off the Band-Aid just yet. If you’re using Google’s free plan, you have 15 GB of storage spread across Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, and Google Photos. If you need to free up some of that space to make room for photos, take a look at clearing out your Gmail first. The less space it takes up, the more room you’ll have for photos. The path of least resistance here is to just pay for more Google storage Read More …

Ava DuVernay’s Array teams with Google for $500,000 filmmaker grant

Ava DuVernay’s arts and social impact collective Array has continually made good on its mission to amplify the careers of underserved creatives and crew members in film and TV, with a number of initiatives across its various production, distribution, and nonprofit arms. Now Array is extending its reach even further with the help of Google. Announced today, June 2, Array is partnering with Google Assistant to offer a $500,000 grant to an emerging filmmaker. The Array + Google Feature Film Grant, which is specifically geared toward creatives from historically underrepresented communities, is intended to cover the production costs of a filmmaker’s first feature and will be staffed through Array Crew , the collective’s database for hiring below-the-line workers. “Our nonprofit organization Array Alliance has had a strong relationship with Google for a couple of years through various initiatives,” DuVernay says. “This partnership came about pretty organically as both teams discussed the furthering and fostering of equitable moviemaking.” The recipient of the grant will be selected by an advisory committee within the independent filmmaking community, including Gabrielle Glore, festival director and head of programming at Urbanworld; Francis Cullado, executive director of Visual Communications Media; Crystal Echo Hawk, founder and executive director of IllumiNative; María Raquel Bozzi, senior director of education and international initiatives at Film Independent; and Smriti Kiran, artistic director of the Mumbai Film Festival. “It was important because we truly believe in collaboration and the community model at Array,” DuVernay says of opting for an outside committee instead of an internal selection process Read More …

This startup lets you make money like an Airbnb host—for screening movies

Back in early March of 2020, Christie Marchese was feeling good. She’d just received a $100,000 investment for a new company that was set to launch that month. Her plan was to apply the Airbnb model to the movie industry and turn individuals into movie screening “hosts” who would be given the tools to organize film screenings in places like churches and community spaces. This would bring smaller, independent films to areas of the county they might not normally travel to, and also allow filmmakers and others to help build a bigger audience for a film that, say, was only destined for streaming.   “Our thought was, can you have a movie theater chain that distributes independent films, foreign-language films, to a much wider network of theaters that aren’t traditionally theaters? Where you don’t have to show a movie five times a day for three weeks to barely break even?” says Marchese, who’d already dabbled in the entertainment space as the founder and former CEO of Picture Motion, a social impact agency that builds campaigns around TV shows and films. “So can we use mixed-use spaces? And can we create a financial model that encourages entrepreneurship or that taps into that—to sound super cheesy—gig economy? Where someone could make $500 hosting a movie one night a week? That’s pretty good money.”   [Image: Kinema] Then, of course, COVID-19 hit. Suddenly a company built around in-person gatherings was an unsustainable proposition. Marchese’s dream of disrupting the movie theater business was put on hold. But rather than wait the pandemic out, she turned to her CTO, Tim Knight, and asked, “can you build a virtual cinema?”   After all, people might not be able to attend a live, screening of a film, but they could attend one digitally. Knight came up with a prototype for a digital platform with built-in, live text chat and video broadcasting capabilities so that after a film is streamed, audiences can participate in a panel discussion or virtual chat with a filmmaker Read More …

Why Amazon’s $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM should be blocked

In Tuesday’s announcement of Amazon’s $8.5 billion acquisition of MGM—the historic film studio behind the Rocky , Legally Blonde , and James Bond  franchises—Mike Hopkins, senior vice president of Prime Video and Amazon Studios, naturally dropped two major Hollywood buzzwords.   “The real financial value behind this deal,” Hopkins said, “is the treasure trove of” —ding-ding-ding— “ IP in the deep catalog that we plan to reimagine and develop together with MGM’s talented team. It’s very exciting and provides so many opportunities for high-quality” —ding-ding-ding— “ storytelling .” Yes, in the latest proposed media merger, intellectual property will be married with innovative storytelling to create a company like no other. This has never been done before . . . if you don’t count Disney, Comcast, Sony, ViacomCBS, or the 10-day-old prospective merger of Warner-Discovery. Indeed, just as Marvel and Star Wars spin-off TV shows now populate Disney Plus, prepare yourself for a Rocky -themed reality-TV show (with real boxers!) and as many Bond prequels as Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson (the highly protective producers of the franchise) will allow for, to roll out on Amazon Prime Video.   What is more worrisome, though, is the even greater monopolistic foothold that this deal gives one of the world’s richest and most powerful companies, one whose market cap is not in the billions but trillions. Now, beyond just selling its own products, like baby oils, in its own marketplace and thus edging out smaller, independent businesses, Amazon will be doing the same thing with movies and TV shows at a scale of 10 times what it’s currently been doing in entertainment. Read More …