Amazon Publishing is the company’s own book publishing arm, created to bypass traditional publishers and control every step from production to distribution. It gives Amazon even more power over what gets published, how it’s priced, and how authors are paid—while the profits still flow to a corporation built on worker exploitation, market manipulation, and contracts that prop up surveillance and apartheid systems.
Amazon is rated High Impact because its harms are systemic and interlocking.
Environmental Harm: Delivery fleets, aviation cargo, and data centers generate massive emissions and plastic waste, while public pledges mask lobbying against climate regulation.
Human Rights Violations: Workers face surveillance, injury-level quotas, and unsafe delivery speeds. Migrant workers in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere face wage theft and coercion.
Military & Conflict Complicity: AWS is central to surveillance states. Project Nimbus embeds Amazon in Israel’s occupation and war crimes, supplying AI and data services to its military and government.
The result: consumer spending that powers a machine which entrenches inequality, accelerates climate collapse, and sustains state violence worldwide.