Amazon appears to have banned Hoaxed, a documentary about media manipulation from author, filmmaker, and journalist Mike Cernovich.
As of Thursday evening, users who searched the term “Hoaxed” in Prime Video and the Prime Video mobile app will not be able to find the documentary, despite the fact that it had been available for rental and purchase on the Amazon service since late March.
As of 6:00 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday, options to purchase or rent the title via Prime Video appear to have been removed altogether. The Prime Video page for the documentary now shows a message to users telling them that the title is unavailable for purchase or rental.
“Our agreements with the content provider don’t allow purchases of this title at this time,” the message informs users.
In a post on Twitter, Cernovich reported that Amazon was also removing the title from the devices of users who had already purchased it.
It appears that Amazon has even begun removing Hoaxed from the devices of people who bought it. https://t.co/blLJ2ppsyG
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) April 9, 2020
Cernovich also reported that prior to its removal, Hoaxed had been in the top 50 documentaries across all of Prime Video.
Yes, Hoaxed hit the Top 50 in all of Prime Video.
Now it's banned. https://t.co/X5J8uFArtE
— Cernovich (@Cernovich) April 9, 2020
Searching for “Hoaxed” in the category of “all departments” brings up a DVD link for the documentary as the 14th result, after many other results that are less relevant to the search term.
Amazon has yet to respond to a request for comment from Breitbart News, asking them to explain why the newly-released documentary has been removed. Despite having only been hosted on the platform for a few weeks, Hoaxed had already accumulated 174 reviews from Amazon users, with a highly positive average rating of 4.4 out of 5.
In a comment to Breitbart News, Cernovich condemned Amazon for censoring his documentary.
“Amazon sells films depicting graphic violence, but they are censoring a film that presented a bipartisan, even keel look at the phenomenon of fake news,” said Cernovich.
“It makes us wonder if the anti-war segments of Hoaxed trigged the censors. Amazon has contracts with the CIA.”
Hoaxed is available via its website here.
Are you an insider at Google, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter, or any other tech company who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address allumbokhari@protonmail.com.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.
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