Amazon needs to be clear about removing items on behalf of authoritarian governments

It's too easy to quietly order the removal of pages or products.

To reach that globe-spanning scale, Amazon has expanded into several countries where governments routinely censor information and suppress human rights. Sometimes, the company has even been complicit in that censorship. Last year, Amazon came under fire for purging search results related to LGBTQIA groups at the behest of authorities in the United Arab Emirates. Several months earlier, the company allegedly capitulated to an edict from Beijing when it wiped all customer ratings and reviews for a book authored by Xi Jinping, after it received negative reviews. Amazon still heavily markets the book on a portal reported to be the fruit of a partnership between the company and the Chinese state apparatus.