Unreported Truths About COVID-19 And Lockdowns Part 1, by Alex Berenson, has rocketed to the top of the Kindle charts after Amazon had attempted to censor the book and was met with harsh backlash.
Like with other types of content from lockdown skeptics, and even others that mainstream outlets like to call “conspiracy theories,” the attempt at censorship gave way to the Streisand effect and actually increased the public awareness of the material.
Known for being a vocal critic about the lockdowns, Berenson authored a book regarding the COVID-19 pandemic. Berenson sought to get his book published through Amazon Kindle’s Direct Publishing.
The Big Tech e-commerce giant, however, did not initially approve of his book and wrote to him saying it wouldn’t publish it.
“Due to the rapidly changing nature of information around the COVID-19 virus, we are referring customers to official sources for health information about the virus. Please consider removing references to COVID-19 for this book,” said Amazon.
After Berenson took to Twitter and expressed his frustration over the fact that his book was not published, several people started to criticize Amazon, including Elon Musk: “This is insane @JeffBezos. Time to break up Amazon. Monopolies are wrong!”.
No sooner did Musk tweet than Amazon ended up escalating the issue and wrote back to Berenson saying it would go on to publish the book. Sarah Elison, Amazon’s spokeswoman said that the book was censored “in error”.
Berenson felt that Musk publicly tweeting about the incident gave him a quick resolution from Amazon’s end.
“I think Elon’s decision to highlight the censorship spurred Amazon to move quickly. It’s possible they would have backed down eventually, but his tweets made their position indefensible,” said Berenson.
