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

[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)