NBA fans are familiar that Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving shared a link to an alleged antisemitic documentary. It is titled “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake up Black America”. He initially defended his stance and claimed that all he did was a search for his name’s origin on Amazon and was instantly connected to the documentary.
It soon became clear that many people had a problem with or were offended by the documentary. However, the fact still remains that it was found on Amazon, a somewhat reputed streaming service. Fans might be interested to know that the CEO of Amazon recently spoke out on this issue. Additionally, he also revealed that the documentary would remain there despite all the recent negative publicity.
Amazon CEO sides with Kyrie Irving and talks of different viewpoints
Talks of religion and race are usually very sensitive. We can spend all day debating whether Kyrie misused his platform. However, that does not change the fact that Amazon still chose to air the controversial documentary. Moreover, they have not taken it down regardless of the backlash faced through forms of petitions and protests.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the antisemitic film Kyrie Irving shared on Twitter will not be removed from the platform. https://t.co/Zg0NLMmNGy
— TMZ (@TMZ) December 1, 2022
Their CEO Andy Jassy was interviewed in order to find the reasoning behind this train of thought. After all, why would Amazon promote something that seems to be condoning racial and religious hatred? However, Andy’s response and explanation seem to shed some light on all of this.
“Moderating content for sale on Amazon is one of the trickiest issues we deal with. Some cases are more straightforward…if you have works that actively promote or incite violence, or teaches people how to do things like pedophilia, those are easy. We don’t allow those….When you have content whose primary purpose is not to espouse hate 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.”
Jassy went on to explain why he felt it was a “slippery slope” for Amazon to engage in acts of silencing or canceling these “hate promoting” types of documentaries.
Amazon declines to take down video Kyrie Irving publicized despite requests from ADL and NBA. https://t.co/h53RTmbonE
— NetsDaily (@NetsDaily) December 1, 2022
“Amazon has “hundreds of millions of customers with lots of different viewpoints. As a retailer, we have to be able to allow access to those viewpoints even if they are objectionable and even if they differ from our own personal viewpoints.”
Quite valid points from the CEO. He did give out a disclaimer that he was against antisemitism. However, certain principles are required when managing something as large as Amazon.
