Amazon's Kindle Platform Has A Porn Problem

Amazon's Kindle platform reportedly allowed children to view volumes of photos depicting naked women and media showing adults engaging in explicit acts. The issue, which was first reported by Reuters, prompted Apple and Google to warn Amazon about the flaw with its Kindle app on mobile devices. At the center of the storm is the Kindle Unlimited subscription service, which allowed underage users to download and view full-color explicit content on their phones via the Kindle mobile app. 

"Pornography also is available through Amazon's Kindle online store and viewable on versions of the Kindle app," the report claims. Amazon's Kindle is the biggest player in the global e-book industry, and the company even has its own label and publishing services that are tethered to the Kindle brand. There's a separate tier for kids, as well, but that offers a very limited selection of books targeted at children. The adult material seen by the underage children, in this case, was mostly self-published content pushed by Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing platform.

After the alarm was raised by Reuters, Apple raised the age rating for the Kindle app from four years to 12 years on the App Store, while Google's Play Store serves it under the "teen" label. The Kindle Unlimited service offers adult-oriented content in addition to more traditional titles, and it is often sold at low prices. Notably, the Kindle Unlimited subscription service doesn't offer any parental safety controls to keep their children from being exposed to explicit content. That is different than Amazon's Kids+ subscription, which serves age-appropriate content for children ages two through 12 years old.

This isn't Amazon's first brush-up with a porn problem. Amazon-owned Twitch, the biggest game streaming platform on the planet, reportedly made it possible for children access to pornographic content, according to research by The Times. In 2017, a viral video also showed an Echo speaker retrieving porn results after mistaking a song request made by a toddler. The chief of India's National Commission for Women wrote to Amazon in 2020,  asking the company to remove pornographic literature from its platform.