amazonfail

[julesjones]

It's the morning after the night before...

Just in case you've been under a rock, Amazon has been removing the sales rankings on a lot of books, with a very heavy skew towards books that have LGBT terms in the keywords regardless of their sexual content, and a skew towards alternative sexuality books of all kinds, and to erotica aimed at women. And a few other things besides, while leaving other things untouched, which together give a rather disturbing picture of pandering to a particular narrow viewpoint of what "adult" consists of. This completely removes those books from view on many of the search functions, and on things like "if you liked this book..."

I think it's not actually that likely that the exact pattern of censorship is an official corporate policy. I think it's much more likely to be one or more of the following possibilities that have been floated during the discussion: some pressure group gaming the automated "report this item as offensive" system; a kneejerk corporate reaction to complaints about "porn" without thinking things through; some mid-level manager showing his/her bigotry in public by imposing personal standards of "adult" on a new filtering system without the knowledge of the higher-ups, etc, etc.

But if that's the case, then Amazon need to think long and hard about how they got gamed, whether externally or internally. And for those who think there's nothing to worry about, because it was only the queers and the feminists and the pornographers who got hit -- what happens when *your* interests get the same treatment?

Because that's the real issue underlying this -- Amazon has just censored a whole lot of books by making it almost impossible to find them in their database. They're a private organisation and they have the right to do that if they want, but it's not something I want to encourage. What will be the next target of this censorship? I believe an opt-in filter with a sane definition of adult would be a good and useful service for them to offer, but this is neither opt-in nor sane.

Comments

[growlycub.livejournal.com]

I was going to say that I didn't think there was a system to be gamed, but then I looked more closely and found something.

Interestingly enough, the feedback is different for different book versions.

Some books just have a general comment box (trade paperback)

http://www.amazon.com/Wolf-Tales-VII-Aphrodisia-Bk/dp/0758226934/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239615327&sr=1-2

and some have a feedback system that allows to report them as inappropriate for pornographic reasons (Kindle).

http://www.amazon.com/Sexy-Beast-IV/dp/B0012T6O30/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239614709&sr=8-7#suggestion-box

So, if it's only Kindle books where you can immediately report inappropriate content, that would go totally counter to what happened (paper books losing rankings as opposed to Kindle versions).

But in any case, as you said, if Amazon was gamed from the outside, their IT department showed an appalling lack of security awareness.

[troutkitty.livejournal.com]

They did it, they knew they were going to do it, and they've been sending out emails since at least February saying that they're going to be doing protecting us against ourselves in order to restrict the searches.

Now they insist that it is a glitch, and that they had no idea restricting ranking to restrict the search results would actually restrict the search results!

It's the worst kind of double-speak on New Coke level of bad corporate decisions. But I'm not drinking the glitch kool-aide.

[julesjones]

Oh, I think the de-ranking system in general is Official Corporate Policy. But it would not surprise me at all if there was a little freelance censorship going on within Amazon that has significantly extended the reach of the system beyond what was officially intended -- notably the equating of "LGBT interest" and "adult content". And "it was a glitch" doesn't wash as an excuse under those circumstances. By setting up such a draconian system in the first place, they opened themselves up to internal abuse.

[tiggerbrasilf.livejournal.com]

There is a hell of a lot about this on my flist today. It would seem that LGBT is coming off worst and even books where the author is known to be gay is falling fowl of it which isn't good. Yet you can still get ratings on sex toys! There is however a petition now and lots of people are encouraging people to boycott amazon, not sure if it will work but we'll see I suppose!

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I agree, if Amazon feel they want a way for customers to filter their searches, that's fine, but then "Adult" has to be applied across the board and violence and horror need including. There also needs to be some way of setting one's own filtering preferences.

[ciciaye.livejournal.com]

Do you mind if I link to this post? Just so I can let anyone on my friends list who might be unaware know what's going on.

CCA

[julesjones]

Link away to any of mine. But it might be useful to also link to the two main info posts on the meta_writer comm:

first summary post:
http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11560.html

list of affected books:
http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11992.html


There are also later update posts on that comm, but those two are a good primer.

[esmeraldus-neo.livejournal.com]

I've written to them and I won't buy anything until it's fixed, but I don't really agree with people who are swearing off forever, even if they fix it.

I want to reward good behavior as well as warn/boycott for the bad. Otherwise I think their incentive to fix it is less.

[julesjones]

Yes. They need a good shouting-at, but if they say they'll sort it out and actually follow through on that, they should be rewarded for listening and doing something about it.

Not least because, as I've seen pointed out elsewhere, there are a lot of puritans out there who would *love* to see the freaks and the perverts turn away from one of the few shops that will sell you anything at all so long as it's legal, and deliver it to you in a plain brown box with a nice bland logo.

[jthijsen.livejournal.com]

Hee, I never even thought about it that way! All of my DVDs and books were delivered like that. Oh dear, what will the neighbors think of me...