Amazon announced yesterday that it was removing products featuring QAnon, the right-wing conspiracy theory. This comes after the attacks on the Capitol last week that involved many individuals who identify as part of QAnon. 

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• Amazon has not removed President Trump and MAGA merchandise from its platform. Rival Shopify announced the closure of Trump's official campaign store on Thursday. 
• Amazon has not specified whether it will restrict or remove sales of Trump-affiliated products.
• The QAnon conspiracy theory, and products associated with it, have already faced bans by Etsy, Peloton, Facebook, and others.
• Around 60% of the items sold on Amazon are sold by third-party sellers, who list items on the site independent of Amazon and make use of its advertising and delivery services.
• Amazon also removed the social medial platform Parler from its cloud hosting services, and Parler has sued Amazon for removing it in response. 

E-commerce, streaming, and online payment companies, including Amazon-owned Twitch, have continued to cut ties with President Trump en masse after a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building. Additionally, several tech companies including Facebook and Microsoft have suspended political donations and are internally evaluating political donation practices.

We wrote about how Amazon was sued for removing AWS support from social media platform Parler yesterday, and you can read the full story here. 

Twitch: 

• The Amazon-owned streaming platform banned Trump's official stream channel over concerns of it being used to incite violence. 
• Twitch temporarily banned Trump's channel in June 2020 for hateful content related to Black Lives Matter protests. 

Shopify:

• Shopify shut down the Trump Organization and Trump campaign's online stores, which sold official Trump-branded merchandise.
• Shopify is an Amazon competitor and allows sellers to build their own online stores on its e-commerce platform.
• The Canadian company says it removed at least two stores linked to Trump, including the official campaign store, because the president's recent actions violate Shopify’s “acceptable use policy."

Stripe:

• Stripe will stop processing payments for President Trump’s campaign website and online fundraising infrastructure.

PayPal:

• PayPal and PayPal-owned Venmo removed an account owned by Joy In Liberty, a group that raised funds to fly Trump supporters to Washington D.C. ahead of Wednesday's events.

Vantage, a service that offers Amazon Web Services (AWS) users a management tool for controlling costs and resources, is going out of stealth mode today. Vantage will provide developers with a better user experience, as well as helping them to save money. 

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• The standard AWS console is fairly complex and hard to navigate; Vantage offers its users a simpler alternative. 
• Company founder Ben Schaechter has previously worked at AWS and, while AWS offers developers more tools than most competitors, he wanted to help build out the user experience. 
• At launch, Vantage is offering users a free plan, as well as paid “pro” and “business” plans with additional tools. 

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• This company raised $9.3M to help orgs gift employees with glamping trips, Peloton bikes, and virtual sommelier lessons. Check out Blueboard's Experience menu.*
• Amazon is opening four fulfillment centers and one sortation center in Detroit that is expected to create more than 2,000 new jobs. 
• Amazon is partnering with George Mason University to give public school teachers in Washington D.C., Virginia, and Maryland opportunities to shadow Amazon workers and take graduate courses. 
• Companies including AT&T and UPS joined the number of large corporations pausing their political donations. Amazon has yet to make a statement about political donations. 
• Over 30,000 companies are building their eCommerce apps all without writing a single line of code.*

* This is sponsored content.