An AP reporter received an email from an Amazon's director of corporate communications saying that "there was a glitch in our systems and it's being fixed." A glitch that's been there since February?
This is an update from the story that developed over the weekend about Amazon identifying LGBT books and more (for example, feminist books like Jessica's Full Frontal Feminism) as "adult" and therefore deranked on the website. This is not to mention the fact that (hetero)sexually explicit books like Ron Jeremy's autobiography weren't deranked, while Ellen Degeneres' autobiography was.
tehdely has an interesting take on the situation; I agree that it seems hard to believe that the company is simply being run by Christian fundamentalists. But we do know one thing; there is anti-queer, ant-feminist motivation behind this and Amazon has got to step the fuck up. Craig Seymor even pointed out the problem to them in February and it's only now, when folks are up in arms, that they're taking action on this. Not okay.
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Just found someone claiming credit for the whole thing--I don't know enough code to tell if this is legit or not.
Seems plausible to me. There's a huge amoral Internet userbase out there willing to do stuff like the mass-reporting for pay (although it isn't entirely "third worlders"; that's an ugly racist stereotype).
Amazon still isn't off the hook, though. Even if they weren't being overtly bigoted, they still missed a huge fucking loophole.
It doesn't make sense unless this person somehow sent out e-mails from Amazon to the other gay authors about how it was a new policy. This is all so damn fishy...
Seems more a case of Amazon not bothering to do the research and assuming everything was OK with their flagging system. I mean, when was the last time you EVER heard a company say something like "Sorry. Our system sucks, case in point."
i agree with katemoore. seems highly likely that this was done for lulz (gag) BUT it is still highly problematic that amazon didn't pay enough attention to concerned folks asking about why certain works were flagged months ago (when the hacker was first testing their plan). amazon is definitely to blame for negligence and needs to issue an apology for just assuming their system was working correctly even when they were told it was not. on jezebel there are some examples of them fixing the error when contacted, but really they should have looked a little further into the situation instead of just sending out generic email responses.
like others have said this is a good reminder to go back to the local indie shops. it's so much more fun to hand your cash over to a real person rather than click a button anyway!
I could be wrong, but I don't see how that would explain Full Frontal Feminism or He's a Stud, She's a Slut being deranked. Or Lady Chatterley's Lover, either. If he was just attacking LGBT books, then those three ought to have been left alone, right?
It doesn't explain Amazon's responses or lack thereof, either.
I think that post is just someone who takes pride in being an internet asshole wanting to take credit for this.
He's lying. There isn't a link to "report inappropriate content" or whatever. And there wasn't before this debacle -- you can check the Google cache.
See also http://bryant.livejournal.com/672165.html
i just want to put this out there....
my suggestion if you are boycotting amazon...
shop at Better World Books.
awesome company with social and environmental impact. used and new books, even text books.
check it out
betterworld.com or betterworldbooks.com
FUCK AMAZON. everyone should switch over to Barnes and Noble. I deleted alll my orders on Amazon and have now placed orders on B&N.
I'm going to do the same thing.
If you really want to pull your business away from Amazon, Barnes & Noble isn't really a better choice. Powell's has a bigger used market and it much much better to its employees and the local book/library economies of the cities they are located in.
I have some friends who are using this opportunity to suggest everyone become more acquainted with their local and/or independent bookstores.
Some links to find them:
http://www.indiebound.org/indie-bookstore-finder
http://www.randomhouse.com/bookstores/local.html
AWESOME
Thank you for these links - I found several indie bookstores in my area that I didn't know about - I can't wait to visit them!
Good idea. There's also this:
http://www.strandbooks.com/
OR everyone should switch to their local independent books store, if possible.
Go Powell's!! Portland pride! :D
Give up those pricey corporate ones altogether! Use half.com and buy used!
Isn't half connected to amazon?
Yes
It's connected to ebay.
Anyone have any tips for us on the other side of the pond? Time was amazon.de was the only place I could English books at all.
*buy English books, that is.
I am sitting here listening to NPR-Fresh Air and a the interview today is with a journalist named Michelle Goldberg, who wrote this: The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World
So, I went to look the book up on Amazon - and sure enough - I typed in the title (and the title even had an auto-fill-in option, which was correct) and it did not come up in the search. I then just entered "The Means of Reproduction" and it came up with the Kindle edition, but on THAT page there was no link to the hardback. So, I clicked on the author's name and it finally came up.
This is, indeed, very troubling for all of the reasons that have been laid out here.
I am a long time Amazon user - but until this is fixed? No more.
I'm confused. If Amazon is blaming this on a "glitch," then what up with the former letters they sent out re: "this is considered adult literature, and not appropriate." Am I missing something? That seems a HUGE double-speak attempt, even for a major corporation.
Indeed, you'd think that they would have said, "We're not sure what's going on here, we'll look into it," rather than talking about their adult policy that's in consideration of their entire customer base. People keep trying to shrug it off that Amazon has bad customer service or something, but um, hello, if you don't know what your customer service reps are telling people, that is a huuuuge problem, and it's not the sort of company I want to buy from.
And just saying "It's a glitch" and hoping it goes away is NOT the way to do it, even if it IS a glitch. How about a strong statement that they do not discriminate against gay and feminist topics?
I can't speak for others, but I wasn't shrugging it off when I said that. Amazon has terrible customer service. It's just a fact, not an excuse for anything.
I wasn't speaking about anyone here, actually, but elsewhere on the 'net. I've been following this on some other sites where people really want to try to explain it all away for some reason. People who aren't interested in social justice seem to have much weaker BS meters than us feminists do. :)
I've actually found their customer service to be stellar.
This censorship shit sucks hard, though, so until they correct it, I'm not buying from them anymore.
Amazon has other double standards as well. They deleted my review of one of Phyllis Chesler's books. They said that when I pointed out that contrary to Chesler's book, India is NOT an Arab country (a claim she made twice), I was making a personal attack on the author.
I also got a response saying it was a glitch. If we want to give them the benefit of the doubt, the best case scenario is that someone else hacked into their ratings system, and they didn't bother to check into it when they first got emails complaining. That puts them at lazy and negligent, but not homophobic or sexist. I doubt we'll ever find out for sure one way or the other.
Amazon's homophobia here is obvious and certainly shouldn't be dismissed, but I think this also raises some real concerns about the future of digital publishing and censorship: Making Books Disappear
I think people might want to reserve judgment until more details come out. I'm not a huge fan of Amazon myself, but there seems to be the possibility that the site was attacked, either by some anti-sexuality group or by someone who wanted to create controversy.
Someone on the blogosphere had posted a screenshot of the Amazon "report content as inappropriate" button that is no longer there. Of course, the screenshot could have been doctored, but if there was a button that caused something to automatically de-list with enough complaints, it could easily have been used by someone unaffiliated with Amazon--a hacker out for laughs, a conservative group that's annoyed at something liberal the company did, even a rival company--to cause the PR nightmare Amazon is having right now.
I'm not saying that this scenario happened, just that it could have, and if it did, we might be playing right into the hands of the people who set this up.
When I read about this situation, I emailed Amazon to explain my displeasure and request they delete my account. Here is their response, which I've just received:
"Hello,
Thank you for contacting Amazon.com.
This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.
It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles - in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search.
Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.
Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.
Sincerely,
Customer Service Department
Amazon.com
Note: this e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message."
I have so many responses to this email and don't feel like typing them all - so let me just say that I still don't buy that it's a glitch, and this "cataloguing error" does not seem to be consistent with reports that the company was attacked by evildoers on the web. I'm sticking with my original assessment: Amazon is not worthy of my business, and I'm going to buy my books elsewhere.
And how dare they use the word Amazon!
This just makes me sick amazon.com a nest of filthy bigots? Where can you buy a book or cd any way?
this is bad that amazon did this. They be ashamed of themselves for doing this.
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