Exactly. Just like "Correlation does not imply causation" Hanlon's razor is one of those things people love to trot out to appear sophisticated when it has quite the opposite effect.

Would it also be "We eventually figured out something was wrong and went through a very annoying process of learning about royalties and how they interplay with prices, discounts, and other factors and then set things right" if Amazon's mistake was cutting their own fair share in half rather than their business partner's?

The first two words of the rule are "never assume".

"Attempting to invalidate random quotes you read on the internet by taking them to logical extremes is kind of missing the point."

- Albert Einstein

I see this more as "do not assume until there's evidence of malice". Not that you should not look for evidence - basically, innocent until proven guilty. There's a tendency to judge every ignorant act as malice when, a lot of times, it's just that - ignorance/incompetence.

Not talking specifically about this case, although it may apply, we just read a twitter thread.

It's not "never investigate". It's "never assume".