Banned Books: Analysis of Censorship on Amazon.com

This report investigates Amazon’s region-based shipment restrictions on amazon.com, uncovering widespread and often overbroad censorship—especially of books related to LGBTIQ, occult, erotica, Christianity, and sexual health—across the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and other regions. Using a Selenium-based method with Common Crawl ASINs and an All Offers Display side channel, the authors identify 17,050 restricted products, cluster regions into baseline/moderate/high censorship tiers, infer three master blocklists, and find inconsistent, misleading user messages; they also note incomplete sanctions enforcement for Russia/Belarus, limited overlap with Chinese censorship due to sampling, and recommend transparency on legal bases, user appeals, and periodic regional review.