Saturday, June 06, 2020

Elon Musk calls for Amazon monopoly to be broken up

In the Wall Street Journal, Nat Ives reports,

Tesla CEO Elon Musk blasted Amazon after it rejected a book about the coronavirus pandemic, a clash that highlights the power some big tech companies wield over speech.

The criticism came in response to a tweet by Alex Berenson, who said Amazon had rejected his submission for a self-published e-book called “Unreported Truths about Covid-19 and Lockdowns.” It questions whether the virus is as deadly as public health experts say.

“Time to break up Amazon,” Mr. Musk wrote on Twitter. “Monopolies are wrong!”

Shortly after the exchange, an Amazon spokeswoman said the book had been removed in error and was being reinstated. The company earlier tied the decision to withhold the book to the retailer’s policy on content around disease-related information, according to a portion of a note from the company to Mr. Berenson that he shared on Twitter.

The Amazon spokeswoman didn’t address Mr. Musk’s claim that the company was a monopoly that should be broken up.

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