Amazon Marketplace lets sellers offer lithium-ion batteries and other products that can cause injuries, causing some to ask who is to blame when things go wrong
Alana Semuels / The Atlantic : Tweets: @alanasemuels , @alanasemuels , and @alanasemuels Tweets: @alanasemuels : Though Amazon has banned the sale of 18650 lithium ion batteries since August, it's still easy to find them on the site. In March, I bought 8, even though the reviews suggested they were faulty. @alanasemuels : The mental dance one burned man goes through when he buys stuff on Amazon: ""I click ‘OK,’ and then think, I hope it doesn't blow up." https://www.theatlantic.com/ ... @alanasemuels : Here's a story I did while still at @TheAtlantic, about people who buy things from Amazon that ended up exploding and/or burning their houses down, and why Amazon isn't culpable. https://www.theatlantic.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2019 investigation put a face on a gap Amazon had already acknowledged: it banned 18650 lithium-ion batteries in August, yet the reporter bought eight faulty-looking ones months later. The piece framed the core unresolved question — when a marketplace product injures someone, is Amazon a seller or just a connector of buyers and sellers?
That question has only sharpened since. A California appellate court later rejected Amazon's middleman framing outright, ruling it responsible for third-party product safety (California appellate ruling), and by 2025 Amazon was suing the CPSC over being deemed responsible for recalls of third-party goods (CPSC lawsuit).
First-order effects
- Buyers remain directly exposed: batteries Amazon explicitly banned are still purchasable on the site, so the company's own safety policy is not matching its storefront reality.
- Injured customers face an accountability vacuum — with Amazon positioned as a connector rather than a seller, there is no clear party to hold liable at the moment of harm.
Second-order effects
- Scrutiny spilled onto Amazon's own shelf: reporting traced the opaque outsourcing behind AmazonBasics battery supply chains and found dozens of dangerous AmazonBasics products still listed, turning a third-party liability debate into a first-party one.
- Lawmakers entered the loop — a bipartisan House letter pressed Andy Jassy on why hazardous items like a suicide-linked food preservative remained on sale, converting consumer-safety questions into congressional oversight.
Third-order effects
- Courts and regulators are converging on treating marketplaces as distributors bearing real liability for third-party goods, dismantling the 'we just connect buyers and sellers' legal posture.
- Amazon's response — litigating against its own safety regulator rather than expanding enforcement — signals a structural fight over whether platform scale confers exemption from distribution-layer liability or ends it.
The trend: Marketplace platforms are being pushed by courts, regulators, and legislators from neutral intermediaries toward bearing liability for what third parties sell, with enforcement gaps like banned-but-available listings as the trigger.