On Friday morning, Goodreads users who wanted to read reviews of the werewolf romance Mate by Ali Hazelwood were confronted by the cover of the new Eric Trump book Under Siege. One of the site's volunteer moderators had gone rogue and changed Mate’s cover, added the subtitle “Goodreads Censorship in Favor of Trump,” and altered Mate’s listing into an explanation of why. To hear them tell it, Goodreads was removing criticism of Trump’s book from the site.
“Silencing criticism of political figures—especially those associated with authoritarian movements—helps normalize and strengthen those movements,” the post that replaced Mate’s description said. “When we let powerful people’s books be protected from criticism, we give up the right to hold power accountable.”
Goodreads employs a volunteer staff of “Librarians” who act as moderators for the site and have the power to make changes to the listings. One of these librarians altered the titles, pictures, and blurbs of several popular books including the Mate, the Resse Witherspoon penned thriller Gone Before Goodbye, and the Nicholas Sparks bestseller Remain. The changes were up for a few hours before Goodreads caught on and fixed the listings.
The rogue librarian claims Goodreads is censoring negative reviews of pro-Trump books. They said that Goodreads deleted negative reviews of Under Siege as they came in after its publication on October 14. “These were the honest opinions from real readers who disagreed with the book’s content,” the Librarian said in their post. “When people noticed and complained, Goodreads deleted ALL reviews of the book—positive and negative alike. This wasn’t an accident or a one-time glitch. It was a deliberate pattern.”
A Goodreads spokesperson confirmed that a Librarian had altered the covers and listings for the books. “We're aware of unauthorized edits made by a volunteer librarian to several book listings. All titles affected by the unauthorized edits have been restored to their correct information, and the librarian no longer has an account on Goodreads,” the spokesperson said.
In response to questions about reviews for the Eric Trump book, the spokesperson told 404 Media that Goodreads “has systems in place to detect unusual activity on book pages and may temporarily limit ratings and reviews that don’t adhere to our reviews and community guidelines. In all cases, we enforce clear standards and remove content and/or accounts that violate these guidelines.”
On Monday, the two week old Trump book had no reviews and no ratings. By Tuesday morning, Under Siege had begun to accumulate reviews and ratings again. The Kamala Harris campaign memoir 107 Days, by contrast, has been out since September 23 and has more than 14,000 ratings and more than 2,000 reviews.
Goodreads has done this kind of thing before and its review guidelines state it will delete “unusual” reviews or “limit the ability to submit ratings.” The idea behind this is to prevent review bombing of controversial figures, but the author’s Goodreads protects tend to be conservatives. In the summer of 2024, it temporarily halted reviews of JD Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy after people had begun to dunk on the Vice President by leaving reviews for the book. There are many “unusual” reviews still up for Harris’ memoir, including a one star review that says “Did not read but so sick of seeing this 💩 in my suggested 🖕🖕”
This kind of one-sided protection from review bombing is at the heart of the rogue Goodreads librarian’s complaint. “When a platform removes criticism of a political book while leaving praise, or removes everything to hide that [that] criticism existed, they’re not saying neutral—they’re picking a side,” their post said. “Goodreads is owned by Amazon, one of the world’s largest companies. When major platforms decide which opinions can exist and which must disappear, they shape what people think is true or acceptable.”
