Amazon said on Monday that it was removing products promoting QAnon, an unfounded conspiracy, from its website after QAnon supporters were prominent in the riot at the Capitol last week.
The move follows Amazon’s decision to launch Parler, a right-wing social network, from its web servers and cloud services.
About 60 percent of the products sold on Amazon are offered by third-party retailers, who list items on the site and often use the company’s advertising and delivery services. Flags, shirts, hats and other merchandise, as well as books self-published to promote QAnon, still turned up in a search on Monday afternoon, many with favorable customer reviews and indications that they were shipped from Amazon’s warehouses to customers. Amazon said removing items could take several days.
Amazon’s policy prohibits products that ‘promote, incite or glorify hatred or violence against any person or group’, although it has been criticized for not enforcing its own rules quickly. If sellers try to evade tracking systems, they may lose the ability to sell completely on the site.