Failing the Amazon way

[louiselux]

Wow, what utter crap from Amazon. It's been classifying anything with a GLBT theme as 'adult' and removing it from sales rankings, meaning that it doesn't show up in searches and making the books impossible to find on site wide searches.

Details here: In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists.

Amazon is now saying that this was a 'glitch'. Right. Why a glitch is not a glitch

Its 'adult' classification somehow failed to include materials such as '50 years of Playboy Centrefolds' and 'Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper'. More here

Jezebel.com is keeping lists on which books do and do not keep their sales rankings: Queer theory books, books on coming out, and feminism books lose their rankings, but A Parent's Guide To Preventing Homosexuality gets to keep its rank?

Amazon rank

In conclusion, fuck off Amazon.

Comments

[i-am-zan.livejournal.com]

*hugs* ILU!!!! So much! Thank you for spreading the word too! I had though that at first it was me over reacting! but .... I sense this is not a glitch!

I cannot believe some of the books that have been 'blacklisted' as it were. I have beenvery re-miss in comments over the past three weeks! :/ and I thought I could not possibly love my friends more ...but you know what ... I do! *clingshug*

LOVE!

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

*hugs* Don't worry about commenting. I hope you're feeling better now. Drink healing tea.

[glass-icarus.livejournal.com]

as much FAIL as this whole debacle is turning out to be, i am so, so glad my flist, f-of-flist, and the rest of the entire Internet is EXPLODING with this news. &hearts

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

No probs, I just hope Amazon gets its act together and sorts this out!

[secretsolitaire.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was following this story obsessively yesterday and am eagerly awaiting any further clarification from Amazon, since obviously the "glitch" explanation ain't cutting it. It will take a lot for them to convince me to come back, but I'm willing to listen.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Scribbles links to some interesting posts on this which basically some guy says it was him running a script. It doesn't explain the whole Amazon saying it has a new policy though. Colour me baffled.

http://louiselux.livejournal.com/498563.html?thread=4906883#t4906883

[puddingcat.livejournal.com]

I saw this in one place yesterday - hence only doing a "WTF?" post - now it's everywhere. I'd hoped it was an overreaction or misunderstanding.

Balls.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Blech, yes. I'm really hoping it's incompetence. But whatever it is, Amazon needs to get its finger out and fix it.

[2metaldog.livejournal.com]

Saw a post that was supposing that this was something like what happened with strikethrough. That being a group of wingnuts was going through the listings on Amazon and flagging all the books they felt "damaging to the morale of people".

Personally, I don't quite buy that as I've seen posts from 2 different authors who questioned Amazon about why they were de-ranked and Amazon responded that it was their new policy.

In all, this just proves my long held point that Amazon is not worth your hard earned bucks.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Sigh. Yes, it does seem to have definitely been Amazon's policy. Whether they realised the full implications of it I don't know. I just hate it when companies that I had liked turn out to be shits.

[scribblemoose]

Personally (and it might just me being in a laid-back mood today) I wouldn't be surprised if they had this policy of removing porn from the ratings (because they don't want anyone making a fuss if Little Johnny does a search and ends up with Porn) but the algorithm they wrote to select what was porn had some tricksy keywords in. (Hence the glitch of which they speak - yes, they do have this policy, but it's only for extreme stuff, not just GLBT, only the code they wrote to enforce the policy is crappy. I suspect the people replying to emails haven't been informed of extent or nature of Glitch yet.)

In other words, I suspect it's incompetence rather than censorship.

Still crappy, but an important distinction.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

I mean, I would love this to be the explanation, because I love the idea of Amazon and omg it's convenient. penknife makes similar conjectures actually, which I find plausible because in my experience that's how dumb things like this happen. Decision making power may have devolved somehow to people who shouldn't have had that responsibility.

[scribblemoose]

These links lend another interesting angle:

http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html

http://community.livejournal.com/brutal_honesty/3168992.html

My mind, she is boggling. O.O

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Omg, thanks. He's saying he trolled the whole site? Whoa. Also, what a dick. I hope this really is the explanation because then I won't have to hate Amazon.

[(Anonymous)]

That guy from brutal_honesty is lying, he's a troll desperate for attention:
http://bryant.livejournal.com/672165.html

According to rishabree, "He's also a known troll - weev was featured in the NYT's piece from awhile ago." (source: http://seperis.livejournal.com/725316.html)

[hungry-worm.livejournal.com]

Wow, what asshattery. *stunned* Would you mind if I link to your entry? Otherwise I might just snag the links and repost. I can't believe this stupidity.

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

That's fine, please feel free.

[the_rck]

It's not just GLBT books, though they're extremely hard hit. From what I've read over at dearauthor.com (they had three or four entries on it the last I checked, so I'm not linking to a specific entry), a lot of mainstream het romances and romantica titles have been hit, too. There are several authors reporting the status of their own works, and a couple of people did broader searches and discovered that some entire lines of titles are hidden (Black Lace was mentioned specifically).

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

Bloody Amazon, this is just ridiculous and very worrying. I'm hoping they'll be able to give more than some half-arsed reason for this happening.

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

Also, apparently, various textbooks and books on disability and sexuality . . .

oursin, who is a SRS historian, notes some of her books are affected, some aren't, apparently randomly.

[moshesque.livejournal.com]

I always liked Amazon, but this is just awful. :(

[louiselux.livejournal.com]

I would love to hear any explanation from Amazon that makes sense of this, because I love their service. But this sort of thing is just not on.

White-Out Rage.

[7veilsphaedra.livejournal.com]

I had a conversation in someone else's LJ about this, and I don't know if I ever want to deal with Amazon again, even if they stop lying about their screw up and bigotry, and apologize and re-commit to free expression. I see this sort of censorship as one of the prerogatives (in the worst possible meaning of the word) of companies which grow too damned big for the rest of us.

There isn't a more compelling argument for resisting the allocation of power to a single company.