Jeff Bezos is getting praised for calling out racist emails from customers. Here are the Amazon CEO's sharpest jabs at his critics, from calling one 'the kind of customer he's happy to lose' to a reported blackmail attempt (AMZN)

While he's traded barbs with space rival Elon Musk in the past, 2019 seems to have marked a new era for Bezos: with his increased visibility have come increased critiques of him and Amazon.
Bezos hasn't taken all of it lying down, turning to Instagram and, in the most high-profile incident, Medium to speak his mind.
Most recently, he's drawn the ire of some Amazon customers who disagree with the company's support for racial justice. Bezos has started posting emails he's received to Instagram, describing one irate man as "the kind of customer I'm happy to lose."
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Jeff Bezos has been speaking his mind in recent days about his support of the Black Lives Matter movement but it's not the first time Bezos has used his platform to issue stinging reprimands or frustrated rebuttals.

Particularly in the last 18 months, the Amazon CEO and owner of rocket company Blue Origin has seen his star and his massive fortune rise. But along with that visibility have come frequent critiques of Bezos and Amazon, and even an attempt at blackmail, according to Bezos himself.

It appears that Bezos isn't shy about making his opinions known, and he's increasingly turning to social media to do it. While he's used Twitter in the past to trade barbs with tech rivals like Elon Musk, 2019 marked the beginning of a more outspoken era for Bezos.

Bezos has spoken out sparingly over the years, and has rarely used social media to respond to critics or trade jabs. But in 2015, he used Twitter to add fuel to his nearly decades-long battle with Elon Musk over space travel.

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Bezos founded his rocket company, Blue Origin, in 2000, while Musk founded SpaceX in 2002. The two have never seemed to see eye-to-eye when it comes to their respective outer-space ambitions, and in 2013, their rivalry heated up, first over the exclusive use of a NASA launch pad , then over a patent .

When SpaceX successfully landed its Falcon rocket booster in 2015, Bezos tweeted about it, describing it as "suborbital" and adding, "Welcome to the club!" an apparent dig at the fact that Blue Origin's New Shepard had launched and landed the month before , and had reached a higher altitude.

In February 2019, Bezos published an explosive blog post titled "No thank you, Mr. Pecker," in which he accused National Enquirer publisher AMI and its CEO, David Pecker, of trying to blackmail him.

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The month leading up to the blog post had been tumultuous for Bezos. He and his wife, MacKenzie, announced they were divorcing after 25 years of marriage, and almost immediately after, the National Enquirer revealed Bezos had been dating Lauren Sanchez, a TV host and owner of an aerial filming company.The Enquirer said it had conducted a four-month investigation into their relationship and had obtained texts and photos the couple had sent each other.

The Enquirer's investigation and the company's communication with Bezos behind the scenes appeared to rile Bezos, who decided to take the issue public: He published a fiery blog post saying AMIhad been threatening him with the publication of explicit photos he'd taken of himself unless he stopped investigating who was leaking his photos and texts to the tabloid.

AMI also demanded that Bezos no longer claim the publisher's investigation into his personal life was influenced by political motivations, Bezos wrote.

As a result, Bezos published the emails he'd received from AMI, which described the explicit photos in detail.

"Rather than capitulate to extortion and blackmail, I've decided to publish exactly what they sent me, despite the personal cost and embarrassment they threaten," Bezos wrote.

More recently, Bezos took to Instagram to call out a senior Trump official who accused him of ducking an important meeting.

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In February 2020, Bezos posted an Instagram photo with a caption that appeared to call out White House trade adviser Peter Navarro.

That same day, the Washington Post had published a story featuring an interview with Navarro , in which he accused Bezos of dodging a conversation about Amazon's ongoing issue with counterfeit goods. In the interview, Navarro described seeing Bezos at a dinner in Washington, DC, and deciding to approach him to press for a meeting. Bezos reportedly told Navarro to call Jay Carney, Amazon's senior vice president of global corporate affairs, who would set up a meeting. Navarro apparently took that response as an insult.

The entire situation, from the conversation at the dinner to the Post's report, appeared to rankle Bezos, who, in a rare move, used Instagram to provide his side of the story.

In June, amid ongoing protests against police brutality, Amazon has added a Black Lives Matter banner to its site, a move that appears to have angered some customers. Bezos shared an email he received titled "All Lives Matter," along with his pointed rebuke.

Bezos shared an email from a customer named Macy, who wrote that she found Amazon's Black Lives Matter banner "offensive" and "quite disturbing."

In response, Bezos described what it's like to be the father of a 20-year-old white son versus a 20-year-old black son.

"I simply don't worry that he might be choked to death while being detained one day. It's not something I worry about. Black parents can't say the same," Bezos wrote.

He said that he supports the Black Lives Matter movement and that his stance on the matter will not change.

In a second Instagram post, Bezos wrote that an angry customer who sent him a profanity-laden email was "the kind of customer I'm happy to lose."

Bezos said he'd received a number of "sickening but not surprising" messages after the first customer email he posted, but said that "this sort of hate shouldn't be allowed to hide in the shadows."

"It's important to make it visible. This is just one example of the problem," Bezos wrote.