Appearing at the DealBook Summit on Wednesday, Amazon’s chief executive, Andy Jassy, said the e-commerce giant had no immediate plans to remove — or add a disclaimer — to the antisemitic film that the Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving drew attention to on the Amazon website last month.
“As a retailer of content to hundreds of millions of customers with a lot of different viewpoints, we have to allow access to those viewpoints, even if they are objectionable — objectionable and they differ from our particular viewpoints,” Mr. Jassy said.
Some decisions are “more straightforward,” he said. Like content that “actively cites or promotes violence or teaches people how to do things like pedophilia.”
Last month, the Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving tweeted a link to Amazon for a documentary called “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America!” which has antisemitic content, including claims that Jews control the media, and the false assertion that millions of Jews did not die during the Holocaust.
The film was self-produced by its director, Ronald Dalton Jr., in 2018, according to its listing on Amazon. It was also made available on Amazon through its Prime Video Direct program, a self-service platform it started in 2016 to allow filmmakers and content creators to upload their works and reach the company’s millions of customers.
The company has a “a significant group of people,” as well as a panel, Mr. Jassy said, that looks at content and makes decisions on whether or not to remove it. He said the content monitoring process is “pretty involved” and difficult to scale.
“On top of that,” he said, the company has to “decide you will build another process where you have to evaluate which items get disclaimers.”
Amazon said earlier this month that it was “looking” at whether to add a disclaimer to the antisemitic video, after it received a letter from the Anti-Defamation League urging it to do so.
“The reality is that we have very expansive customer reviews,” Mr. Jassy said. “For books with a lot of attention — especially public attention — customers do a good job monitoring other people.”
