An online conspiracy theory claims that Amazon Prime Video censored the Russell Crowe film Robin Hood to protect the oligarchy.
A TikTok recently documented an issue with the playback of the 2010 film. On Amazon Prime Video, the film was missing an intro text that should read, “When law oppresses the people, the outlaw takes his place in history.”
Of course, the TikTok got picked up on X. A user there speculated that Amazon might have intentionally stripped the film of that message. “In 2025, truth like that doesn’t vanish by accident,” the user wrote.
That unsurprisingly got some people so riled up that they reached out to fact-checking website Snopes, which published an article on the subject late last week. Apparently, this claim goes back years despite being pretty easily explainable.
The subtext of the claim is that Amazon—whose CEO Jeff Bezos is facing claims that he operates in an oligarchy under U.S. President Donald Trump—censored the intro from the Robin Hood film because said-oligarchy doesn’t want that message out in the ether at this time.
That is, of course, an absolutely wild theory. But Snopes is known for taking the most outlandish theories and thoughtfully debunking them. So the outlet contacted Amazon and asked a spokesperson about it. The spokesperson attributed the issue to a simple technical error and said the company uploaded a new, corrected version.
So it’s not likely this had anything to do with the Trump administration. The simplest solution is usually the correct one. In this case, a digital media expert told Snopes that Amazon likely uploaded a “textless version” of the film by accident.
Internet culture is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here. You’ll get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.