There’s no way they’re doing this on purpose. They can’t possibly be selling enough of these to offset legal fees and bad press

When you say you are doing nothing wrong and continue with an action then you are doing it on purpose.

Why on earth would they do so? I believe you 100%, but why Jeff, why?

Precedent.

If they artificially limit their "AI" from outside pressure, then they will have admitted that they can do it, and they'll get pressured to do it more and more. They don't want to deal with that, and would rather wait until a law is passed "forcing" them to do so - coincidentally Amazon will be best positioned to comply with that law and for some reason it'll only ever be used to go after smaller competitors.

The type of people who run Amazon have zero social conscience. As another example, just look at how badly they treat their warehouse workers.

They don't want to establish the precedent that recommending a harmful item makes them liable for that harm at any cost even at the cost of a few dead children. Before this in a previous scandal they were promoting "literature" that suggested parents of autistic children cure them with bleach and recommended the bleach they could inadvertently murder their children with.

Because someone decided admitting they fucked up profoundly here is too scary from a business perspective.

They are obviously afraid of a precedent of having to answer for what they sell on their site and what happens next.

It’s understandable but no less sociopathic once understood.