September 22, 2021

The Honorable Elizabeth Warren

United States Senate
309 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Warren,

Thank you for your letter dated September 7, 2021.

The health and safety of Amazon’s employees, partners, and customers is a top priority for us. When
testing was not broadly available, we built a COVID-19 testing program for our frontline
employees. This required building a College of American Pathologists (CAP)-accredited and Clinical
Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA)-certified diagnostic lab and earning an Emergency Use
Authorization from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a COVID-19 test. Through this
testing program, we have provided millions of free COVID-19 tests to our frontline workers.

The success of our internal testing program allowed us to extend the service to Amazon’s
customers. We now offer the Amazon COVID-19 Test Collection Kit DTC for sale in Amazon’s
marketplace. Through this easy-to-use, FDA-authorized home PCR test, customers can send samples
to our diagnostic lab and quickly get results back. To date, our lab has processed millions of tests
from both our employees and customers.

Earlier this month, we announced our participation in a White House initiative to make affordable
test kits more widely available across the country. Through that initiative, Amazon will offer FDA-
authorized COVID-19 test kits, including our own PCR test collection kit, at-cost to the public.

Amazon believes getting vaccinated is the most important thing our employees can do to protect
themselves and our communities, and we invest significant resources to encourage our employees
to choose to get vaccinated. In addition to regularly sharing vaccine education messages and
resources to address hesitancy and combat misinformation, we have hosted more than 1,300 free
on-site vaccination events that made the COVID-19 vaccines available to over 1.5 million Amazon
employees and their families. We also provide our non-exempt, hourly workforce with a $40 per-
dose incentive, regardless of where they got vaccinated. Most recently, we launched the Max Your
Vax Sweepstakes, which features nearly $2 million in prizes simply for getting vaccinated.

As a retailer, we respect that our customers want access to a wide variety of viewpoints on the
matter, which is why we continue to list the books in question.

Our search and recommendations features are not designed to direct consumers to a particular
point of view, but rather to help customers find products they want to purchase. In response to
certain searches, we also take additional steps to provide links to authoritative guidance on health
matters. For example, in response to COVID-19-related searches, we display a signpost at the top of
the search results linking to COVID-19 guidance from an authoritative public health source such as
the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) or the FDA.
We continue to work on a number of fronts to contribute to public health during the pandemic and
we look forward to keeping your office apprised of our ongoing efforts.

Answers to your specific questions are as follows:

1. What are Amazon’s existing policies regarding the listing, promotion, and sale of books and
other products containing COVID-19 misinformation on its platform?

Our store maintains publicly available content guidelines for authors, publishers, and book
vendors. Like other booksellers, we provide our customers with access to a variety of
viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable.

However, as mentioned above, in response to COVID-19 related searches in Amazon’s retail

store, we display a signpost at the top of the search results linking to COVID-19 guidance from
an authoritative public health source such as the CDC or the FDA.

2. What specific actions has Amazon taken to address the spread of COVID-19 misinformation
via search results or other uses of its platform?

As indicated above, we direct customers searching for COVID-19 related products to official,
authoritative sources for the latest guidance on protective measures and vaccines at the top of
relevant search result pages. We constantly refine our approach in a fast-moving information
environment.

In addition, we continue to take actions to provide a positive customer experience and

encourage our customers to refer to government sources for frequently updated, authoritative
guidance. We maintain help pages for our customers to help inform them about masks and
other personal protective equipment (PPE).

3. Why do Amazon’s search algorithms prominently list books with COVID-19 misinformation?

Our search and recommendations features are not designed to direct consumers to a particular
point of view, but to help customers find products they want to purchase. We make
assessments based on our customers’ aggregate shopping behavior, and we consider many
factors when choosing the search results to feature for customers, including purchase
frequency, availability, and delivery speed.

4. Why do books with COVID-19 misinformation receive “Best Seller” tags from Amazon? What
criteria does Amazon use to award these tags, and what steps does Amazon take to highlight
products containing the tag?

A product’s position on the Best Seller list is calculated based on its sales performance. We do
not consider the title, seller, or any other data about the product in providing the Best Seller
badge. Badging products as "Best Sellers" does not give them preferential treatment in search
results or recommendations.

In addition, our customers expect that the Best Seller list is an accurate reflection of what others
are buying, and not a list curated by Amazon.

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Thank you for your attention to this issue.

Sincerely,

Brian Huseman
Vice President, Public Policy