Amazon search bug? Bestsellers blamed

Following the last ivermectin incident, Amazon has hit a snag again in searches related to the pandemic. When searching for "COVID-19" on Amazon, the top-ranked book is an anti-vaccine book, which is also a bestseller on Amazon.

The author of this book has been promoting anti-vaccine rhetoric. We don’t know the specific content, but we can get a glimpse of it through the relevant introduction of the book on Amazon.

First, the author said, "We live in a world that is increasingly governed, not because of democratic systems, but by public health decrees and the fear instilled by politicians." The epidemic in the United States is already so serious, but it is considered a panic.

Not only that, the book also mentions that the global elites are taking advantage of the epidemic to gain more wealth, and the effectiveness of vaccines is exaggerated. He called on the people to unite, take control of their own health, and fight for "democracy and freedom."

It is such a book that is at the top of the search results for "COVID-19". Not only that, the comments are basically all supporters of this statement, "This book is written for those who can think independently and are not brainwashed by big special interest lobbying."

Recently, U.S. lawmakers contacted Amazon's current CEO Andy Jassy about this matter, asking Amazon to provide information about the erroneous policy and the measures taken to prevent such erroneous recommendations, and accused Amazon of being "unwilling to modify its business practices to prevent the spread of false information or the sale of inappropriate products."

Amazon also responded to this: "We are constantly evaluating the books on the platform to ensure that they meet our content guidelines, and as an additional service to customers, we also provide a link to COVID protection measures at the top of the relevant search page."

Amazon's purpose is to sell products and it makes recommendations based on consumers' purchasing intentions, but the recommendation system cannot identify the specific content of the products, which will cause a certain degree of purchasing bias.

What’s more serious is that because authors can categorize their books, and Amazon recommends searches based on keywords, it is likely to be exploited by malicious people, such as “If you write a book about cancer and believe that juice can cure cancer, you can categorize your book as a cancer book, and it may eventually rank first in the oncology section of Amazon.”

This type of search error is not uncommon. Although it can be resolved afterwards, it will have a negative impact on both buyers and sellers. Amazon still needs stricter supervision in the review of search recommendations.

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