Amazon.com, Inc.
AMZN
Consumer Discretionary
4
exclusion reasons
4 themes
This page is part of our public exclusion list — a transparency tool that shows which companies we screen out and why. It is not investment advice, and it is not an accusation. But it is subject to change as our understanding of the facts evolves.
FTC 2025 $2.5B settlement ($1B penalty + $1.5B refunds): Amazon deployed subscription traps, fake discounts, and deceptive Prime cancellation flows targeting consumers
AWS co-developed Project Nimbus alongside Google Cloud — the main cloud infrastructure for the Israeli government. When Gaza invasion computing demands surged in October 2023, the military turned to AWS. A military presentation prominently featured AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure logos. The June 2025 UN Special Rapporteur report (A/HRC/59/23) named Amazon among companies whose involvement raises "reasonable grounds to believe" corporate actors have been embedded in an "economy of genocide." Amazon did not respond to BHRRC requests for comment on IHL violations.
As You Sow 2024 Plastic Promises Scorecard — F grade (107th of 225 companies); zero transparency, no defined plastic reduction goals despite being among the world's largest e-commerce packaging consumers. AMZN already excluded for environmental_damage; this adds the specific waste_plastics sub-category.
FTC/DOJ $25M civil penalty (May 2023): Amazon programmed Alexa to retain children's voice recordings indefinitely to train speech recognition models, violating COPPA. Court also ordered deletion of algorithmic models derived from illegally retained data. Separate FTC $5.8M penalty against Ring (Amazon subsidiary): employees illegally surveilled customers, failed to stop hackers from taking control of users' cameras.
Related Issues
Surveillance Capitalism
Surveillance capitalism is extraction without consent — behavioral data harvested from people whose agreement was buried in terms they couldn't negotiate and can't revoke. We exclude companies whose revenue depends on this, and hold a high bar for any tech company where surveillance is a meaningful input. Until users can control, audit, and delete their data, this stays a core exclusion.
Palestine & Occupied Territories
We exclude companies that profit from Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories — settlement construction, military technology, surveillance infrastructure, discriminatory resource arrangements. The ICJ ruled this occupation unlawful in 2024. We don't wait for political resolution to stop funding what international law has condemned.
Research Sources
3 organizations
Related Exclusions
Wondering what we do invest in?
The Naughty List
A digest of changes to our exclusion list — new additions, removals, and the evidence behind them. We review the list continuously as new evidence surfaces.
Companies appear on our exclusion list based on our investment judgment — not because they've done anything illegal. This is a difference of values and opinion, not an accusation of wrongdoing. Exclusion does not constitute a recommendation against investing in any company, and absence from the list does not constitute a recommendation to invest.
This information is provided for educational and transparency purposes only and should not be relied upon as investment advice. Data is drawn from independent watchdogs, NGOs, government registries, and Ethical Capital's ongoing research — see Research Sources for the full list.
Ethical Capital LLC is a state-registered investment adviser in Utah (CRD #316032). Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training.