Amazon on my phone has decided that I speak Spanish, and cannot be persuaded otherwise.

I blame Critical Race Theory

— Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) May 21, 2021

Amazon (retail site) on my work laptop has also decided that I speak Spanish, and will not allow me to change it at all. At best, I can only translate the pages to English, not actually switch the site to English.

Note that I have a US IP address, the laptop is new, I don’t have any proxy software installed, I have cleared all caches and all cookies, used different browsers, and have tried in incognito mode, my region and language is set to the US and US English, and my time zone is Eastern. There is no reason that Amazon’s retail site should conclude, based on no evidence, that I am a Spanish speaker.

Luckily, I can read Spanish pretty well so I just roll with it — but when we attempt to live in a world where we think the algorithm knows best absurd things like this occur.

Good to know that I’m not the only person this has been happening to.