July 31, 2018

The Honorable Keith Ellison

United States Congress
2263 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Dear Congressman Ellison,

Thank you for your letter on July 17, 2018. I am writing to provide you with an overview of our policies,
and the steps we take to prevent the sale of certain products and content on Amazon.

Sellers that offer products for sale on Amazon must comply with all federal, state, and local laws, and
Amazon’s policies applicable to those products and product listings, including our policies that govern
offensive products and offensive content. Our seller policies are outlined on Seller Central, a support site
available to, and regularly used by, sellers on Amazon. Sellers are expected to comply with these policies,
and we immediately investigate any reported violations.

Amazon has several mechanisms to prevent products that violate the law or Amazon policy from being
offered on our site. We closely monitor and respond to direct customer feedback and external party
notices of product pages in violation of the law or our policies, and we undertake proactive measures to
ensure policy compliance using sophisticated technology. If a seller lists a product in violation of the law
or any of Amazon’s policies, we remove the prohibited item and send a message to the seller with
information explaining why the product was removed and that failure to remove similar listings or relisting
of the prohibited product could results in the loss of selling privileges. When appropriate, the seller may
have its selling privileged suspended or revoked. Inventory that violates the law or Amazon policy is
restricted from being sold and is removed from Amazon’s fulfillment centers.

Since receiving your letter, we have reviewed the products and content referenced in your letter, and
removed the listings that were found in violation of our policies and permanently blocked the seller
accounts that were in violation of Amazon policy. We are also reviewing the seller accounts for potential
suspension.

Our responses to your specific questions follow below:

• In response to questions 1 and 2, Amazon does not disclose financial information related to
individual product listings, KDP authors, individual artists and music genres, or seller or service
accounts.
• In response to question 3, Amazon makes a significant investment in, and strictly enforces, our
seller policies. We have developed sophisticated, automated tools that use machine learning to
scan listings on Amazon, automatically removing listings found to be in violation of our policies,
before we are ever notified by an external party. These automated tools are supplemented by
teams of investigators that conduct manual, human review of our listings on a regular basis.
• In response to question 4, Amazon has reviewed the products and content referenced in your
letter, and we have removed those listings, and permanently blocked the seller accounts found to

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 be in violation of our policies. We have restricted the inventory to prevent it from being sold and
are in the process of removing it from our fulfillment centers.
• In response to question 5, Amazon prohibits listing of products that promote or glorify hatred,
violence, racial, sexual, or religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views.

We take this issue very seriously and all of our policies seek to earn and maintain the trust of our
customers.

Sincerely,

Brian Huseman
Vice President, Public Policy