{"id":53502,"date":"2023-05-24T13:00:59","date_gmt":"2023-05-24T17:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nlpc.org\/?p=53502"},"modified":"2023-05-23T11:59:23","modified_gmt":"2023-05-23T15:59:23","slug":"nlpc-asks-amazons-censors-who-in-government-are-you-trying-to-protect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nlpc.org\/featured-news\/nlpc-asks-amazons-censors-who-in-government-are-you-trying-to-protect\/","title":{"rendered":"NLPC Asks Amazon’s Censors: Who in Government are You Trying to Protect?"},"content":{"rendered":"
On Wednesday, National Legal and Policy Center presented a proposal<\/a> at\u00a0Amazon.com, Inc<\/a>\u2019s annual shareholder meeting that would require the company to produce a semi-annual report which would itemize requests it has received from the federal government to\u00a0censor<\/a> users of its platforms and services.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s board of directors opposed our proposal, as explained on pages 39-42 in its proxy statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n Speaking as sponsor of the resolution was\u00a0Paul Chesser<\/a>, director of NLPC\u2019s\u00a0Corporate Integrity Project<\/a>. A transcript of his two-minute remarks, which you can listen to here<\/a>, follows:<\/p>\n Amazon totally misses our point in its statement of opposition to our proposal, which asks for a report on requests the Company has received from all branches of the U.S. government.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n All we ask is for the Company to list incidents in which a government official has requested content to be removed from Amazon\u2019s platforms.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But Amazon throws a bunch of lawyerly language about irrelevant policies and procedures in its opposition statement, to distract from our simple request.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For the purposes of our proposal\u2019s request, my organization doesn\u2019t care about Amazon\u2019s sales policies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Likewise, my organization doesn\u2019t care about Amazon\u2019s legal compliance measures.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My organization doesn\u2019t care about Amazon\u2019s content guidelines.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My organization doesn\u2019t care about Amazon\u2019s community guidelines.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n We also don\u2019t care how Amazon enforces<\/em> any of these policies and guidelines.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n To summarize and simplify, all we care about for the purposes of this proposal, is for Amazon to tell us who<\/strong> in the federal government has asked for content removal<\/a>, when these government officials did it, how Amazon responded to these government officials, and why the Company responded the way it did.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n All the information we ask for is irrelevant to any policies and processes Amazon cites in its opposition statement to our proposal.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There is nothing that prevents the Company from providing this information, with perhaps a few exceptions in law enforcement situations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But those by far don\u2019t account for the majority of requests Amazon has received to censor content<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And believe me, this is about illegal and unconstitutional censorship<\/a>, not about law enforcement.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Amazon obviously does not want to disclose this information.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n As we learned from the \u201cTwitter files,\u201d Big Tech<\/a> companies willfully complied in working with government to censor<\/a> based on speech<\/a> and ideology<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So consequently, we now ask, who in the government is Amazon covering up for?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Please vote for<\/em> Proposal number 9.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Read NLPC’s shareholder proposal for Amazon.com, Inc.’s annual meeting here<\/a>.<\/p>\n