The Amazon Fiasco

[fredericks]

Folks all over my FL have been posting on and commenting about Amazon.com's mass removal of rankings on several books with LGBT themes, along with books deemed erotica - note that "erotica" and LGBT are not mutually inclusive, as many non-fiction LGBT works have also been deranking, making it imposible to search for them by name from the Amazon main page. The information keeps coming in (here's a link to seperis's LJ post that's continually updated with relevant links), but I get the feeling the reason behind the action won't ever be fully known (computer glitch? hacker action? angry employee? Amazon bowing to pressure from conservatives? regular ole asshattery?) no matter what PR puts out there tomorrow at 8am.

My question? if it is simple asshattery why aren't media outside of books affected? You can search for Queer as Folk and The Birdcage, but historical non-fiction about the treatment of homosexuals in WWII is suddenly MIA? Those books are more offensive and "adult" than seeing Hank Azaria mince around and play the fop? Completely confusing and somewhat random. I'm keeping my eyes peeled.

Comments

[childofmetis.livejournal.com]

I hear they are claiming "computer glitch", but apparently it's been happening quietly since February. The whole thing stinks.

[fredericks.livejournal.com]

I caught that. The entire thing comes off as arbitrary, doesn't it? And if Amazon is actively preventing people from *searching* for material, simply ridiculous.

[semirose.livejournal.com]

My theory is some asshat who only has the ability to affect books decided to "quietly" inflict his views on everyone and once the internet exploded over it decided fuck quiet he was going to get fired anyway and started pulling everything he could since he's so fired tomorrow.

[fredericks.livejournal.com]

*lol* I like your theory. Dude is so totally fired tomorrow.

[army-kitten.livejournal.com]

SO FIRED! :o

wtfuckingfuckingf

[army-kitten.livejournal.com]

i ran over to post this to the bobof list serve. thank you for the heads up. i really hope it is a glitch, or else some people really are going to be wearing their asses as hats.

Re: wtfuckingfuckingf

[fredericks.livejournal.com]

Asshats! They're all the rage!

You've most likely been keeping abreast with the sitch; "glitch" seems to be the word.

[mersipan.livejournal.com]

someone in brutal_honesty claims to have done this as an elaborate revenge prank by running a simple code that compiles all the books with LBGT themes/interests and downvoting them or doing something that somehow takes them out of the search circulation. I dunno if there's ANY amount of truth to it, but it's interesting nonetheless.

The post in question

[mersipan.livejournal.com]

Not friend's locked, I don' think:
http://community.livejournal.com/brutal_honesty/3168992.html

Nuts, though. Completely nuts.

Re: The post in question

[fredericks.livejournal.com]

...uhm, ha? I'm leaning more towards "glitch" than "deliberate douchey act". But, yes, completely concur. I've been double-thinking my entire Amazon usage, if they can label perfectly benign historical non-fictions "adult" just because of the LGBT association.