Jay Williams Wonders ‘Where’s the Criticism For Amazon?’

Much has been made about Kyrie Irving’s decision to tweet out a link to an anti-Semitic film, and his insinuation that he’s read the book the film is centered around. ESPN’s Jay Williams wonders why there isn’t any criticism for the film existing on Amazon Prime Video in the first place.

Williams appeared on First Take to discuss Kyrie Irving dodging the media after a second consecutive game. He had criticism for the Nets guard, but wondered aloud why there was a lack of anger at the world’s largest retailer.

“I watched the entire film,” Williams said. “There’s a lot of things in the film I disagree with. The curiosity nature of it is interesting. Where is that same attention and energy for the platform that is promoting it and profiting off of it? I don’t hear any of that talk around Jeff Bezos and Amazon. I don’t hear anybody talking about that. I hear everyone skewing their anger towards Kyrie for taking a picture of it and tweeting about it. Now, there deserves to be more context there from Kyrie. I think where Kyrie lost a lot of people was his unwillingness to go to the podium and expound upon the points that he learned from watching this. And actually coming out and saying ‘I don’t stand about calling Jewish people the devil. There’s a lot of misinformation, but this is my main point from watching this.’ But I go back to the bigger macro point.”

“It is irresponsible,” Molly Qerim interrupted. “It is irresponsible to amplify messages from Hitler. Ever. On any platform,” she ended while Williams said he agreed.

“So why is it on a major platform? Why is a major platform amplifying it? Kyrie amplified it to 14.7 million people, but the platform is profiting and promoting it to billions of people,” Williams argued. So the anti-Semitism — it is a thing. I have called a lot of my Jewish friends. We have talked about this. I get it. Kyrie Irving deserves a lot of heat. Then put towards something that deserves it, too. And that’s on the platform. I feel like that whole thing is being missed here.”

BSM Staff