Amazon mistakenly told some sellers that it’s now blocking ads with ‘religious content’

Posted by Solver 4 years, 11 months ago to News
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Amazon employees have been taking down ads with religious content, causing some small sellers to take a direct hit on their sales.
One Amazon seller told CNBC that the sudden ad suspension has caused a serious loss in revenue. This person has been selling apparel with Christian and bible messages on them for the last two years.

“Amazon told some sellers that it is now blocking ads containing language about religion, after updating its ad policy.

An Amazon spokesperson said its policies haven’t changed and the blocking was in error, and its employees are now receiving “corrective training.”
SOURCE URL: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/11/amazon-blocks-ads-with-religious-content.html


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  • Posted by mminnick 4 years, 11 months ago
    A related question. Why is it OK to attack Christians and Jews but forbidden at the cost of loosing our job to say anything about Islam? I
    m no talking attacking pe se but anything other than the highest praise/ There are sp,e towns and cities where ychurches cannot ring their bells on Sunday or any other time but the Mussin may call to prayer without let or henderence? The bill or Rights makes it clear that there is to be no infringement of the proactice of ones faith. his seems to be a restriction imposed by government on a persons religious liberty.
    I know the Bill of Rights is for protection from the Federal Government but some of the protections have been extended to infringement by the states as well.

    How did we get into this position? I would say hyper Poitical Correctness.
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    • Posted by 4 years, 11 months ago
      There’s a devious reason that the left pushes their narrative that Islam is, “the religion of peace” This new left is about relentlessly sowing many seeds of destruction in obtaining their morally superior goal by any mean necessary. And their greatest harvests will continue to sprout from the schools.
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    • Posted by CircuitGuy 4 years, 11 months ago
      "A related question. Why is it OK to attack Christians and Jews but forbidden at the cost of loosing our job to say anything about Islam?"
      I think this is something some people made up. Maybe some one somewhere experience this discrimination, but now it's an attempt to make Christians and Jews feel like victims, but it generally doesn't work.
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  • Posted by mminnick 4 years, 11 months ago
    By mistake my rear end. It was.is a trial balloon to guage reaction. If there had been no push back it wold have been increased particularly to Christian items.
    Bezos and crew know what they are doing and always know what is going on within the company especially if sales are affected.
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  • Posted by $ puzzlelady 4 years, 11 months ago
    Reverting to tribalism. Christians have been pushing their spread for decades. Now they keep harping on being persecuted in China and elsewhere. All three religions have their agendas. Victimhood is just the latest gimmick. So are there three competing gods all driving their adherents to bloody extremes, or is it the same big cheese (imaginary or otherwise) with three warring fan clubs?

    Freedom of association means Amazon can sell or block anything they want. If they won't peddle your stuff, find another merchant. If you don't like what Amazon sells, don't buy from them. And if you want to sell stuff, people can refuse to buy. Selling is by persuasion and mutual consent, whether goods or ideas. Trying to get government to coerce acceptance is unconstitutional, especially about religion. Remember separation of church and state?
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  • Posted by $ Thoritsu 4 years, 11 months ago
    Good?

    Seems ok to me. It is their website, until AOC et al decide Amazon is too good to be private.

    Maybe they’ll also limit Flat Earther apparel.
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  • Posted by exceller 4 years, 11 months ago
    "In its ad policy page, Amazon states that it “prohibits content that advocates or demeans a religion. Ads may contain references to a specific religion or faith in a historical or fictional context if the primary purpose is to entertain.”

    Sure. As long as the religion is Islam. Amazon will protect it tooth and nail.

    Christian religion is another matter, right Bezos?
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    • Posted by CircuitGuy 4 years, 11 months ago
      "so long as the religion is Islam. [...]
      Christian religion is another matter"
      In my non-religious non-expert view, it seems like Jewish people started the victimization narrative, really with good reason after millions were murdered, and all the judeo-islamic-christian faith, which I see as very similar adopted it. We're victims. Everyone's against us, and we're struggling to survive. There are definitely horrible people in the world, pogroms, and horrible atrocities, but I struggle to understand how they all feel singled out as victims, esp in the modern world. I'm a humanist atheist. Extremists of all religions agree I'm the enemy, even though I believe in protecting everyone's "olive tree". Everyone wants liberty, reason, and capitalism, and everything that comes from that, whether they'll admit it or not!
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      • Posted by freedomforall 4 years, 11 months ago
        "Everyone wants liberty, reason, and capitalism"
        Unfortunately the politicians rarely, if ever, act with such a goal, and voters keep on voting in people who knowingly and openly oppose liberty, reason, and capitalism.
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      • Posted by $ blarman 4 years, 11 months ago
        Uh, if you have followed the history of the Jewish nation at all since the early 1900's, they have been victims at nearly every turn - no fake victimization needed. It is now coming out that Hitler picked on the Jews as a result of talks he had with a Muslim - that it wasn't his brainchild as many had thought. Then in 1945 when the UN created the new nation of Israel, they were attacked just as soon as the British backed away from protecting them. There have been three major wars since and hundreds of other incursions - everything from suicide bombers to thousands of rockets being launched from Lebanon. I think the persecution of the Jews is pretty legitimate.

        As for Christians, Muslims have been eradicating them for centuries - that's why there are almost zero Coptic Christians remaining. It was the Muslim Ottomans which attacked and decimated the Byzantine Empire in the 1100's and then invaded much of Europe, finally being beaten back by a determined military force. More recently there have been countless terror attacks on Christians throughout Africa and the Middle East by Muslims - not to mention all the raping and pillaging throughout Europe by the migrant communities there. And that doesn't cover the Islamist insurrections in western China just above India or the Chechnyans to the Russians - those same people who slaughtered hundreds in schools.

        It isn't imaginary. Sooner or later all of mankind is going to have to step up and take a stand against Islam - or be destroyed. So far Europe's subservience isn't giving me much hope...
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        • Posted by freedomforall 4 years, 11 months ago
          The US should have created Israel in an 8000 sq mile area of Arizona desert. Obviously, just creating a safe homeland wasn't desired. It had to be in a specific location that belonged to someone else who wasn't consulted, wasn't compensated, and did not consent.
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          • Posted by $ blarman 4 years, 11 months ago
            The current nation of Israel as created by UN Charter in 1946 was created on then-British Crown Land by voluntary disposition of Her Majesty's Government who owned and controlled most of the Middle East at that time (including the Suez Canal). Yes, it was created in that region because that was the Jews' ancestral homeland, but the Brits owned the land at the time. The British even provided security for the first year of the new nation with armed soldiers, tanks, aircraft, etc. It was their departure in 1947 which resulted in the Israeli War of Independence when neighboring Islamic nations attacked them, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of.... (Note that Wikipedia uses the term Arab when this is imprecise - it is the Islamists who have a beef with Israel as laid out in the Qu'ran.)

            What should also be noted was that the British requested that neighboring Islamic nations take in those who were being dispossessed. Those nations refused and instead sent more people to attempt to occupy the land in an attempt to create a humanitarian crisis. Those same Islamic nations have been free to claim abuse and neglect on the part of the new Israeli nation and do so out of sheer hypocrisy. Most have even refused to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist as a sovereign nation despite the fact that all citizens of Israel - Jews, Christians, and Muslims - are accorded equal rights including the right to vote and the right to participate in the Knesset (Israeli Parliament). It should also be noted that several high-profile legal cases which tried Jewish citizens for acts of terror against Muslims resulted in prosecutions of those individuals; the Israeli courts have been respectably non-ideological in their judicial proceedings.
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            • Posted by freedomforall 4 years, 11 months ago
              No argument on the history, but it doesn't negate my comment at all. Whether it was a stupid arrogant act, or it was an intelligent calculated act, the region has been in constant state of war since then, easily predictable at the time. Nice of the British to ask others to take care of people who the UN/British were forcing off the land they lived on. Israel would have been more intelligently sited in Arizona.
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              • Posted by Lucky 4 years, 11 months ago
                freedomforall is to be given credit for correctly reproducing the current progressivista narrative. This narrative differs from fact in many ways. Here is the history:

                The large area extending east to Iran, south to Arabia, north to Turkey, the west bounded by the Mediterranean and Egypt was part of the Ottoman Empire for centuries Land ownership where it existed was in the hands of Turks and in some cases the Eastern Church. There were no nations in that area but many tribes. Jews had maintained a continuous existence there since before the year dot, there were umpteen varieties of Arabs and non-Arab peoples.
                When the Ottoman Empire dissolved in 1918, the British and French took over and divided up the area setting up compliant tribal chiefs as kings. One exception was what the British called Palestine. This was a name dating from the Romans, there is no nation or tribe so named. There was no dominant tribe or ruling family, the British intention was to designate part of it as a Jewish self-governing district.
                The economy grew with the end of the Ottoman stifling corrupt bureaucracy, more relaxed British rule, and Jewish development especially in agriculture. Arab workers came in from around. Substantial areas of land were bought by Jews from Turkish owners.

                Economic progress often has its complainers, here there were two-
                1. From the old chieftain class there was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini. 2. Seeing an opening to make trouble for the British there was Adolf Hitler. These two met, obvious soul buddies, Hitler saw much in Islam to admire but primarily there was the hatred of Jews (and etc), and the fanaticism.
                The result was much German money flowing to whip up antagonism to the British and the Jews. The British tried to be impartial but then (as now) authority leans to those perpetrating violence. Things got worse. Then there was WW2.
                At the end of the war, government and economy in all the surrounding now independent states were in a parlous state. The rulers found the usual easy way out - blame someone.
                (Nothing has changed.)

                ffa is correct- the region has been in constant state of war since then.
                The reason is the need of incompetent dictatorship to have enemies so as to divert attention, a basis in a fanatical religion, resentment of success, enmity to capitalism/imperialism/secularism/whatever all come in handy.
                Being forced off land did happen, mostly of Arab villagers by invading armies of the neighboring nations. This population described itself by tribe or by religion not by the word Palestinian, that (mostly) did not own the land nor had links with the land or area going back generations - it had two options, remain as a minority in a Jewish nation with good/fair levels of income and rights of all kinds, or go to the surrounding nations. There they were not accepted and herded into camps with poor living standards and no rights except for the violent leadership. Levels of subsidy from Germany, EU, UN, are high, there are few industries- bomb making, rocket launching, but much emotional support from (fake) altruistic westerners. The population growth rate is very high, educational support is in hate literature from the usual sources.
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              • Posted by $ blarman 4 years, 11 months ago
                You're welcome to whip out your time machine and go back in time and change things if you want. Anything else is at best backseat driving nearly 80 years after the fact - not to mention it totally ignores that the primary aggressor in these regional conflicts for nearly 1600 years has been Islam - extending to wars among itself. For more on that see Iran vs Iraq in the 70's and 80's or more recently Saudi Arabia vs Iran (drones sabotaging vessels).
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        • Posted by CircuitGuy 4 years, 11 months ago
          I think this trying to evaluate the merits of religious is completely nonsense. If it's something people take literally in place of reason, it's trouble. When it comes to thinks like Catholics, Protestants, and Anabaptists torturing one another in the Middle Ages, I'm baffled at how people at the time tried to work out which religion was the good guys. The same with Buddhists attacking Muslims today, Christians running things in the Dark Ages, Muslim theocracies trying to create their own dark age.

          The one solution to all this is reason. If you signed up as a PR worker for intelligent Islamist extremists, what you're saying is a message they could strongly get behind. If you worked for Protestants attacking Anabaptists, you'd just change the name, dates, and places.

          But it's all crap. Liberty and reason are not only right, but they deliver peace and prosperity. I categorically reject the extremists' narratives in favor of reason.
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          • Posted by $ blarman 4 years, 11 months ago
            "I think this trying to evaluate the merits of religious is completely nonsense."

            That's up to you, but the topic was persecution - which is real and happening today. Personally, I think it's rather easy to evaluate any given religion simply by examining its tenets and observing its people. One can choose to ignore the ideology which is Islam, but one does so at one's own peril.
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            • Posted by Lucky 4 years, 11 months ago
              Yes.
              Evaluating religions can a worthwhile intellectual pursuit, there is an article in Savvy Street on this. We may generally agree that individuals can believe as they wish and speak accordingly and wear funny clothes. The freedom to be wrong is an essential part of peace and prosperity not just a basic right. Now when there is a religion with an objective of conversion by any means including deceit and violence then, yes, ignore it at your peril.
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            • Posted by CircuitGuy 4 years, 11 months ago
              I respectfully but categorically reject this view. It would be so wrong to evaluate me as an individual based on the writing in the Christians Bibles passed down in my family. Their doing so is a manipulation perpetrated by extremists who want to keep people in slavery. Given an informed choice, most people would want to live in a world of free individuals, far from the world of judging people based on their group identity.
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              • Posted by $ blarman 4 years, 11 months ago
                It has nothing to do with a group identity whatsoever. It has everything to do with 1) what principles are espoused by a given religion and 2) do their professed adherents actually live according to those principles.

                If a Christian were to judge your behavior based on the precepts in the Bible, their only reason for doing so would be to assess whether or not you would make a good Christian. The same would be for any other philosophy, creed, or religion.

                Observation: there are a lot of people who call themselves Christians who are really bad at it. Many do not even understand what they profess to believe and others have never even read the Bible. Christians as a general religion have a very high standard they set for themselves and there are few who actually live it day in and day out. I wouldn't worry too much about what a Christian's opinion of you would be. Focus on correct principles and let the chips fall where they may.

                Observation: there are a lot of Muslims who are zealots. They believe in their religion - even the women (which boggles my mind). And a certain percentage even go to the extreme range to carry out what their holy book tells them to do. If the general Islamic population was as apathetic about their religion as most Christians are, I wouldn't be too worried. The problem is that they aren't apathetic at all - possibly because one of the major differences between Christians and Muslims lies in the enforcement of religion. If you're a Christian and you don't want to be a Christian, you don't have your ex-Pastor coming to hunt you down with a bunch of his friends intent on murdering you for your heresy. Not so with Muslims.
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