Nbd here, just the world's largest online retailer bowing to Orwellian demands from a psychotic digital dictatorship:

Amazon was marketing a collection of President Xi Jinping's speeches and writings on its Chinese website about two years ago, when Beijing delivered an edict, according to two people familiar with the incident. The American e-commerce giant must stop allowing any customer ratings and reviews in China.

A negative review of Xi's book prompted the demand, one of the people said. "I think the issue was anything under five stars," the highest rating in Amazon's five-point system, said the other person.

Ratings and reviews are a crucial part of Amazon's e-commerce business, a major way of engaging shoppers. But Amazon complied, the two people said. Currently, on its Chinese site Amazon.cn, the government-published book has no customer reviews or any ratings. And the comments section is disabled.

Anything for a buck, right Amazon? Jeff Bezos's spaceflights aren't going to pay for themselves. Just in case it's not clear how totally and completely cool Amazon is with China's propaganda machine:

An internal 2018 Amazon briefing document that describes the company's China business lays out a number of "Core Issues" the Seattle-based giant has faced in the country. Among them: "Ideological control and propaganda is the core of the toolkit for the communist party to achieve and maintain its success," the document notes. "We are not making judgement on whether it is right or wrong."

You read it right: Amazon is refusing to decide whether or not the Chinese Communist Party's "ideological control and propaganda" is right or wrong!

That is so mind-numbingly, stupidly ridiculous that Shaq himself had to do a spit-take a second time:

Hard to believe Amazon started off as an upstart bookseller in Seattle and is now a shill for the Communist machine. But here we are!

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