A report from think tank the Institute for Strategic Dialogue details how the online giant appears to recommend anti-vaccine books, extremist material and QAnon disinformation through its “Customers who bought this item also bought” and “Customers who viewed this item also viewed” features.
The institute found that users who searched for a particular QAnon text were recommended other materials containing 9/11 and anti-semitic conspiracy theories or books by David Icke—best known for believing that the world is controlled by shape-shifting lizard-people.
The report said: “At the core of this issue is the failure to consider what a system designed to upsell customers on tote bags or fitness equipment or gardening tools … would do when unleashed on products espousing conspiracy theories, disinformation or extreme views.
“Similar to other stores that sell books, we provide our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints and our shopping and discovery tools are not designed to generate results oriented to a specific point of view.”
It found that typing “vaccine” would bring up anti-vaccine books and searching for “election” generated auto-complete suggestions relating to the baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.
The report said: “For most users, these recommendations are at best a useful way of finding new content they are interested in, and at worst an irritation to be harmlessly ignored.
“For conspiracy theorists, white nationalists and users perhaps only curiously dipping their toes in the murky waters of extremist or conspiratorial content, however, these recommendations could serve as a gateway into a broader universe of conspiracy theories and misinformation, or to increasingly radical far-right and white nationalist content.”
