Having Trouble Making a Bomb? Amazon Will Help You Select the Right Ingredients!

[PastTense]

Amazon said on Wednesday that it was reviewing its website after a British television report said the online retail giant’s algorithms were automatically suggesting bomb-making ingredients that were “Frequently bought together.”…

Amazon customers buying products that were innocent enough on their own, like cooking ingredients, received “Frequently bought together” prompts for other items that would help them produce explosives, according to the Channel 4 News…

The New York Times found that similar algorithms may be at work in the United States. In one instance, a search for magnesium ribbon — a product that can be used to make a crude fuse — yielded a suggestion for two powders that explode when mixed together in the right proportions and then ignited. A second search yielded a suggestion for two out of three ingredients necessary to make gunpowder.

Amazon ‘Reviewing’ Its Website After It Suggested Bomb-Making Items...

Well, now we know where bomb makers are getting their ingredients–Amazon: your source for everything!

[thelurkinghorror]

Sounds like fear mongering. Maybe if Amazon stops telling you what other people buy then nobody will ever find out how to make crude explosives!

Also thermite doesn’t explode, NYT.

[Aspidistra]

Sounds to me like Amazon has some data that may be of interest to the government.

Although if you’re buying your bomb making supplies off Amazon you’re one dumb terrorist…

[LSLGuy]

God what a stupid and ignorant article.

Next thing you know somebody will be whining because after you buy bleach Amazon will suggest ammonia or vice versa. Because, you know, people clean their houses with both.

The fact that together they make chlorine gas, an actual no kidding WMD under current US legislation, is immaterial.

The problem with knowledge isn’t that we have too much. It’s that so many people have so little they have no sense of perspective. That author and all the breathless cheerleaders coming readily to mind.

[gnoitall]

@LSLGuy

God what a stupid and ignorant article.

Next thing you know somebody will be whining because after you buy bleach Amazon will suggest ammonia or vice versa. Because, you know, people clean their houses with both.

The fact that together they make chlorine gas, an actual no kidding WMD under current US legislation, is immaterial.

The problem with knowledge isn’t that we have too much. It’s that so many people have so little they have no sense of perspective. That author and all the breathless cheerleaders coming readily to mind.

Still, I doubt Amazon’s algorithms actually know anything about bomb-making. So either the coordinated offer is a fluke, or someone primed Amazon’s algorithms with a bomb recipe by buying those ingredients in a statistically-significant proximity (such as the same transaction).

What THAT means is still subject to interpretation. Only the dumbest terrorists would buy everything at one time on a market with guaranteed logging and at least pseudonym-level identity tracking, but there are a lot of dumb people. Or, it could just be someone who figured out how to troll Amazon by constructing a purchase pattern that has the effect of priming Amazon as I’ve described.

[Projammer]

A second search yielded a suggestion for two out of three ingredients necessary to make gunpowder.

I’ve got a couple of friends who like to actually make their own black powder (Charcoal, sulfur, saltpeter) just for the fun of working with different ratios and grain sizes. One of em goes so far as to make his own charcoal, fortunately there are no significant caves around here for him to harvest his own saltpeter (bat guano).

That said, I imagine there are more than a few hobbyists who get their supplies from Amazon.