Amazon.com, Inc.
AMZN
Consumer Discretionary
7
exclusion reasons
5 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
Amazon Web Services provides the foundational cloud infrastructure for the U.S. immigration detention and enforcement apparatus. AWS hosts Palantir's Investigative Case Management system, the central database that ICE agents use to track, identify, and deport immigrants. ICM integrates immigration history, family relationships, personal connections, addresses, phone records, and biometric traits into a single surveillance platform.
In 2025, ICE awarded Palantir a $30 million contract to build ImmigrationOS, a successor system designed to streamline apprehension of removal targets and provide "near real-time visibility" into deportation logistics — infrastructure that runs on AWS.
Amazon actively marketed its Rekognition facial recognition system to ICE. Internal documents obtained through FOIA by the Project on Government Oversight show that Amazon officials met with ICE at a McKinsey-sponsored technology boot camp in June 2018 and followed up directly to pitch Rekognition for immigration enforcement. An ACLU-commissioned test demonstrated that Rekognition falsely matched 28 members of Congress with mugshot photos, with members of color misidentified at disproportionately higher rates.
AWS holds a joint $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract. The Albanese report named Amazon as granting Israel "virtually government-wide access to their cloud and AI technologies," enhancing surveillance and the discriminatory permit regime. Amazon has not published a human rights impact assessment covering Nimbus.
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.
Amazon emitted 68.25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2024, a 6% increase from the prior year driven by data center expansion and delivery fleet fuel consumption. Scope 1 fossil fuel emissions have risen 162% since 2019 — the same year it announced its Climate Pledge to reach net-zero by 2040.
Stand.earth documents that transportation emissions alone jumped 7% year-over-year to 13.34 million metric tons. The EPA has taken enforcement action against Amazon multiple times. A 2018 FIFRA settlement required Amazon to pay $1,215,700 in civil penalties for nearly four thousand violations related to the sale of illegal pesticides through its marketplace, dating back to 2013. ViolationTracker documents $253.5 million in total U.S. penalties across Amazon's operations.
Amazon's warehouse network has created what physicians in Southern California's Inland Empire call "diesel death zones." The company operates one of its largest fulfillment centers — over 1.1 million square feet — in San Bernardino County, where asthma rates are twice the national average. An air district analysis found that large warehouses are disproportionately concentrated in Black and Latino communities, with 62.1% of residents within half a mile of a large warehouse being Latino.
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
7 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.