Amazon

Amazon is one of the most popular online platforms in the United States, with an average of 200 million unique visitors per month.¹ The platform has also played an important role during the COVID-19 pandemic as more consumers rely on online shopping.² Between January and March of 2020, the company made $75.5 billion in revenue, a 26 percent increase over the prior year’s first quarter. Amazon, an e-commerce and advertising platform, can be a source of misleading information and voter suppression content through both its products and advertisements. Amazon sells products, such as t-shirts, books, and other merchandise that are related to politics, voting, and the election. The platform does not place specific requirements on these types of products. Rather, it utilizes the same general rules that apply to all of Amazon’s products, which includes acting “fairly and honestly on Amazon to ensure a safe buying and selling experience.”³ However, there is little transparency around how these policies are enforced or whether the company takes any steps to address voter suppression content within its e-commerce operations.

In 2018, Amazon accrued over $10 billion in revenue from its advertising platform, making it the third-largest ad platform in the United States behind Facebook and Google.⁴ To help avoid the issue of voter and election misinformation, Amazon banned political ads. The platform’s policy prohibits ad campaigns that are for or against a politician or political party or that are related to an election or political issue.⁵ Still, it is unclear how the platform intends to enforce this policy. An Amazon representative speaking with CNBC at the beginning of this year stated that Amazon uses automated tools and review teams to monitor and remove policy-violating ads.⁶ However, CNBC claims that it was able to easily locate ads for political products sold on Amazon, including “Talk Bernie to Me Sanders 2020″ and “Trump 2020 The Sequel Make Liberals Cry Again” t-shirts. Going forward, Amazon should clarify whether its policy prohibiting political ads pertains to products sold on the platform that promote a particular candidate or party. The company should also share information around how it enforces its political ads ban, including information on how its automated review tools and moderation teams are trained and deployed to moderate political advertisements, and how effective these approaches are.

Furthermore, Amazon owns Alexa, an automated home assistant and cloud-based voice service that is available on millions of devices. Alexa can function as a search engine for voting and election information, such as the latest polling information or a candidate’s stance on a certain topic.⁷ In order to stay up-to-date on general election and voting information, such as when voting polls are open, Alexa pulls information in from authoritative sources including Associated Press, Ballotpedia, RealClearPolitics, and Factba.se.⁸ However, Alexa is often unable to provide more contextual and regulatory information, such as whether voting machines are going to be used in a certain area or whether a specific jurisdiction requires a voter ID.⁹ According to Amazon, it decided to focus on areas where the platform sees the most amount of customer interest and need.¹⁰ However, because Alexa promotes itself as a service where individuals can obtain election and voting information, the platform should expand its efforts to connect users with more relevant, contextual, and accurate information related to the elections.

While Amazon has disclosed some of the information sources Alexa uses for voting and election information, the company has not publicly published information outlining how it addresses election-related misinformation, and it is unclear how, or if, the company vets the information it receives from its sources for accuracy. Going forward, the company should provide greater transparency on its policies for misinformation and disinformation on Alexa and whether it takes any steps to fact-check the information Alexa shares with its users.

Furthermore, Amazon should provide greater clarity on its advertising policies for Alexa. Advertising is generally not allowed on Alexa except for a few exceptions, such as promotional offers or deals in response to specific requests from customers.¹¹ It is unclear whether Alexa has political advertising-specific policies and whether Amazon’s ban on political advertising on its platform applies to Alexa as well.

Amazon receives millions of monthly unique users and is therefore at risk of playing a significant role in spreading misinformation. As elections occur across the country, the company should provide greater transparency and accountability around its policies and practices related to misinformation and disinformation across all of its products. In addition, the company should provide greater transparency around its ad policy enforcement efforts, especially as they relate to political ads. This should include information around how Amazon uses automated and human review components to enforce its ad policies, how effective these policies are, and how many policy-violating political ads the company has removed after erroneously permitting them to run on the service.