According to The Markup, Amazon "bans nearly 2,000 items for sale in the United States that fall into 31 broader categories, ranging from skin care products to assault weapons to human organs." The site prepared a quiz to see how good you are at spotting items that should be banned. I took the quiz and failed miserably — I only got two out of six products right!
But Amazon's filters don't catch everything. An investigation by The Markup found nearly 100 banned products that slipped past Amazon.com's safeguards. When we sent our findings to Amazon, most of the listings were removed.
"If products that are against our policies are found on our site, we immediately remove the listing, take action on the bad actor, and further improve our systems," Amazon spokesperson Patrick Graham said.
The Markup's Annie Gilbertson found that Amazon workers who monitor listings have only a few minutes to investigate each one. We've put together a list of six items we found for sale on Amazon. Can you tell which ones shouldn't have been allowed, according to Amazon's rules?
