Amazon pulls sexist T-shirt attacking Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and it shows how little control the online retailer has over its sellers

• Amazon just nixed a sexist T-shirt targeting vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris.
• "All sellers must follow our selling guidelines and those who do not will be subject to action including potential removal of their account," an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider.
• Products affiliated with the Boogaloo Bois movement, the killing of George Floyd, and the QAnon conspiracy have also generated controversy after being listed on the ecommerce site in recent months.

Amazon has yanked a controversial T-shirt attacking Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris after social media users criticized the product's sexist and demeaning message.

The Daily Mail reported that the shirts in question were emblazoned with the phrase "Joe and the h--" in reference to presidential candidate Joe Biden and his running mate, Harris, in the upcoming November election. Other garments sold by anti-Biden third-party brands like The Oxygen Bandit and Weisay contained similar messages, for prices of $17.99 and up.

"All sellers must follow our selling guidelines and those who do not will be subject to action including potential removal of their account," an Amazon spokesperson told Business Insider. "These products have been removed."

—Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) August 19, 2020

T-shirts targeting Harris aren't Amazon's only brush with merchandise-related political controversy of late. The ecommerce giant has long attracted third-party sellers with right-wing views hawking contentious gear.

In July, Amazon appeared to purge patches and T-shirts linked to the far-right Boogaloo Bois movement from its site. However, Business Insider discovered earlier this month that the ecommerce company had not removed all listings, including Hawaiian-print shirts – the movement's trademark uniform.

A racist children's shirt depicting Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck was also whisked off the site in June. Meanwhile, products linked to the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon have proliferated on Amazon, even after the movement was tied to a series of violent incidents and other technology peers like Facebook and Google cracked down on it.

Amazon's current third-party seller policy mandates that items that "promote, incite or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views" be kicked off the site.

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