Amazon CEO Says Anti-Semitic Film Promoted by Kyrie Irving Won’t Be Removed: Have to ‘Allow Access to Those Viewpoints’
Amazon President and CEO Andy Jassy announced on Wednesday that the e-commerce marketplace won’t remove an anti-Semitic film promoted by Brooklyn Nets superstar Kyrie Irving.
Irving returned late last month from an eight-game suspension after promoting the film, Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America, on social media.
Here’s how part of the exchange at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit between CNBC anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin and Jassy went down:
SORKIN: Let me ask you about something else that’s in the headlines and it’s a controversial topic as you very well know. Kyrie Irving on social media pushed out this Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America film and book. This is a film and book that is sold on Amazon. And as you know, he was suspended from the NBA and you’ve gotten leaders from Mila Kunis and Debra Messing and all sorts of people in Hollywood. The ADL has come out and asked you to take this book off the site. What’s your view?
JASSY: Well, trying to decide which content has, which content contains hate content, to an extent, enough that we don’t provide access to customers is one of the trickiest issues that we deal with as a company. And in some cases more straightforward. When you have content that actively incites or promotes violence or teaches people how to do things like pedophilia, those are easy, we don’t allow those and those are straightforward decisions.
When you have content whose primary purpose is not to espouse or ascribe negative characteristics to people that is much trickier and a very slippery slope if we take a lot of those out of the store. And, you know, we have hundreds of millions of customers with lots of different viewpoints.
SORKIN: Right.
JASSY: And inside the company we won’t tolerate hate or discrimination or harassment, but we also recognize as a retailer of content to hundreds of millions of customers with lots of different viewpoints, we have to be willing to allow access to those viewpoints even if they are objectionable and even if they differ from our own personal viewpoints if you’re going to serve that number of people.
Sorkin pressed Jassy on the issue and mentioned that he’s Jewish and is not pleased to know that the film is on Amazon. Sorkin expressed that he’s “worried about anti-Semitism” and “what we’re seeing across the country, across the globe.” He said that the film could lead to violence.
Jassy responded that he’s Jewish as well and is also “worried about anti-Semitism.” He said he found “several parts” of the film Irving promoted “objectionable.” But at the end of the day, he said, Amazon has to allow the content to be available even if it’s objectionable as long as “the primary purpose of the content is not hate.”
Jassy said that Amazon has looked at placing disclaimers toward content but suggested the company won’t since doing so would be “hard to scale.”
Watch above via The New York Times.
