Banned Books: Analysis of Censorship on Amazon.com
Authors: Jeffrey Knockel (Bowdoin College / Citizen Lab), Jakub Dałek (Citizen Lab, University of Toronto), Noura Aljizawi (Citizen Lab, University of Toronto), Mohamed Ahmed (Citizen Lab, University of Toronto), Levi Meletti (Citizen Lab, University of Toronto), Justin Lau (Citizen Lab, University of Toronto)
Volume: 2026
Issue: 3
Pages: 200–214
DOI: https://doi.org/10.56553/popets-2026-0078
Abstract: We analyze the system Amazon deploys on the US “amazon.com” storefront to restrict shipments of certain products to other regions in the world. We found 17,842 products that Amazon restricted from being shipped to at least one world region. While many of the shipping restrictions are related to regulations involving WiFi, car seats, and other heavily regulated product categories, the most common product category restricted by Amazon in our study was books. Banned books were largely related to LGBTIQ, the occult, erotica, Christianity, and health and wellness. The regions affected by this censorship were the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and many other Middle Eastern countries as well as Brunei Darussalam, Papua New Guinea, Seychelles, and Zambia. In our Common Crawl test sample, Amazon restricted shipment of over 1.1% of the books sold on amazon.com to at least one of these regions. We identified three major blocklists which Amazon assigns to different regions. In numerous cases, Amazon’s restrictions were either overly broad or miscategorized. Examples include the restriction of books relating to breast cancer, recipe books invoking “food porn” euphemisms, and Nietzsche’s Gay Science. To justify why restricted products cannot be shipped, Amazon used varying and often misleading error messages such as by conveying that an item is temporarily out of stock.
We reported our findings to Amazon. A year later, we found that Amazon reduced its use of misleading error messages and had eliminated many of its false positive restrictions. Although we cannot conclusively link Amazon’s improvements to our reporting, we believe that our findings serve as evidence that measurement studies can effect change in problematic company behavior.
Keywords: censorship, commerce, Amazon
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