No.
This is the trending topic on Twitter all day, marked by the hashtags #amazonfail and after their horrid explanation seen here at Publisher’s Weekly, though that link is a little slashdotted tonight, #glitchmyass.
Relax. Amazon caved. Or, it was just a glitch and never really happened…
This guy has an interesting, and quite plausible take on the whole situation. In sum, the livejournal entry suggests that this is “Bantown”, a third party trolling that plays two large groups/entities against each other. Sort of like in 24 when evil Cabal of greedy rich white Americans plays the US against the nation of Central Asia or some such, for fun and profit.
In this case, I suppose it’s the LBGT community (not to mention readers and writers of erotica and people who oppose censorship in general) being played against Amazon.com.
Can’t relax until they do the same for all Christian books for a day or two, then Chemistry texts, “The Story of the Stone”, and books that mention Minnesota as the birthplace of creamed corn in a can.
sigh Please disregard double post.
The fact that people are spreading the word and are upset about it?
Amazon didn’t “cave.” The problem still exists. Their mouthpiece came out and said “uh, it was an accident.” That doesn’t prove that it was. “Glitch” is a convenient out when you get caught having done something you shouldn’t have done, but so far, they haven’t proven their claim of a glitch and more importantly, they haven’t rectified anything or begun restoring what’s been destroyed.
And when you search for “homosexuality” from the front page of Amazon, the top result is still an anti-gay book entitled “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality” and 2 more of the top 5 results are anti-gay tomes encouraging “reparative” therapy and other pray-away-the-gay ideas and encouraging the ongoing culture war.
Also, how could it be a glitch? It just happened to be the gay books taken down? Riiight.
I think it’s more likely that someone was gaming the system. The notion that they really decided as an institution to take down sales ranks of gay-themed books across the board is preposterous. The quickness that people would believe it is astonishing. It would be so random and petty.
The notion that they were hoping to suppress gay books and got “caught” is even more ridiculous. I wish people would dial down the outrage and dial up the reason.
Occam’s razor. They don’t know what the hell is going on, either.
Yes, exactly the two components of viral outrage.
So how does that account for the quote in the OP?
If amazon.com said they were unlisting books because of their “adult” content and those included books with gay sex scenes, but not books with straight sex scenes, then how is that just an accident/glitch? It sounds like they knew what they were doing. And based of what I’ve seen of what they have and haven’t unlisted, it looks really bad for them.
Hell, not even gay sex scenes, unless there’s been an addendum to Heather Has Two Mommies I wasn’t told about.
Good point–there was that Jezebel link here about one book that was taken down and one that wasn’t. The one that was was a dating guide but didn’t look explicit–the one that wasn’t was a dating guide for men about getting “manipulative” women and had a “sexy” cover.
Also, they’ve apparently delisted feminist books and books on rape. And books on queer theory.
The thing that really skeeves me is doing the search for homosexuality and seeing that the first book is that book on preventing it. It just makes me feel really gross all over.
I mentioned the title above, but the one that really made me lose it was Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws, by Kate Bornstein. I have a very dear friend for whom I bought a copy of that book, and he credits it with having saved him from suicide on at least one occasion. The thought of it being buried in search results is just about intolerable.
I haven’t seen a source from Amazon affirm that they are unlisting books because of their “adult” content merely because they have gay themes. Yes, people who’ve written those books have gotten email, but it’s boilerplate text and it’s not remotely clear to me that they were sent by humans after a careful review of the book. The only official source from Amazon now says the opposite, that it was a mistake (they probably don’t know what’s going on yet.) So why, given that the only statement from Amazon is that it’s a mistake, would anyone believe they must be lying and they have a secret policy that slows sales and is a PR nightmare for a company with a founder who’s known to be liberal?
Yeah, but BIGEVILCOMPANYBAD!!! Whatever. Yes, it was premeditated. Amazon hates the gays. They also make foam packaging out of puppies. I have the proof right here–I got a package and there was foam packaging in it.
The only problem is, even if someone was gaming the system by sending in numerous complaints about certain titles/categories of books, that would mean that Amazon has no controls in place to prevent this. Also, people who have worked for Amazon or interviewed for Amazon have stated that there is a human in the stream between “receive a complaint” and “live edit to the site” so where does that component come into play in such a scenario? And how does this explain the messages sent to authors about “adult material” and how their decidedly non-adult, simply LGBT material, was de-ranked?
Then they need to say so. “Something went very wrong, it appears that there was a massive problem in our system somewhere. We don’t know where. We need to investigate further to understand it. We did not do this on purpose, and we will restore rankings, and figure out how this happened.” That’s pretty simple. Instead, they’re giving us contradictory stories and talking about “glitches” and that’s not reassuring. And yes, it’s a weekend and yes it’s a holiday. But the internet is open 24/7 and Amazon is an international company. As such, you have your head of PR/marketing on call, 24/7, ready to make a real announcement to your customers and the media on something that’s blown up this huge, this fast. You don’t dick around with bullshit language like “glitch.”
I don’t know what they mean when they call it a “glitch.” They didn’t specify?
Or were they hacked?