Amazon (is) Rank

[darkhavens]

I'm sure most of you have already seen posts regarding Amazon's completely unacceptable behaviour.

click here to contact amazon's customer service
You have to log in, of course. They don't want just any old riffraff emailing them. ;)

sign the petition


And surprise! Now Amazon has been called to account, they're now crying 'glitch!'. Suuure.

Comments

[esmerelda-t.livejournal.com]

Is this just Amazon in the US or have Amazon UK done it as well?

[darkhavens.livejournal.com]

From what I was reading last night, it had hit some countries and not others. I've just gone to check and... welcome aboard the failboat, amazon.co.uk. :(

[suki-blue.livejournal.com]

I'm only just hearing about this. Glitch? Really????

[darkhavens.livejournal.com]

Gay & Lesbian Intercourse Treatise: Cannot Has.

It just made the news on Channel 4. *glee*

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

They might just as well come clean and admit it's a brand new, shiny version of book burning. Or at least concealing from the 'innocent' public literature they arbitrarily disapprove of. The last thing the world needs is yet more segregation. Grrr.

[darkhavens.livejournal.com]

It made me create a new tag, Kitty: rage. I have a rage tag now and it's Amazon's fault.

And it's affected amazon.co.uk too. I just checked a bunch of books and true enough, the sales ranks are missing from the 'inappropriate' ones.

It was fun seeing it on Ch4's news though. :D

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

Apparently, 'A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality' is based on the paradigm of 'gender identity disorder'.

Is it only me, or is 'disorder' an even more patronising and misleading term than 'syndrome'?

It's nitwittery in its most extreme form. It's segregationalist and prejudiced stupidity which has no place in modern society. Fortunately, most of our friends see right through it. Yay!

Amazon is apparently now retracting... It'll take a bit to retrieve their rep.

[darkhavens.livejournal.com]

They're not retracting, they're saying it was never policy and that it was a 'glitch', which I have decided actually means "Gay & Lesbian Intercourse Treatise: Cannot Has".

It's not perfect, but I hadn't had breakfast, so :P.

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

Hee!

There's also this (http://janedavitt.livejournal.com/1246141.html), and when I went to UK Amazon and searched 'homosexual' and 'homosexual fiction', I got some perfectly reasonable results. Nothing at all that smacked of homophobia.

[darkhavens.livejournal.com]

At least they're trying to fix things.

I went to UK Amazon and searched 'homosexual' and 'homosexual fiction', I got some perfectly reasonable results. Nothing at all that smacked of homophobia.

Did you look what tags those results were included under?

I just did that search for 'homosexual fiction', and then I checked the tags. Not one of those results on the first page had a 'gay' tag, or 'erotica' or 'homosexual'. The only reason you can see them on that search results page is because they haven't been classified using Amazon's own tagging system, which is apparently what was used to decide which books got the brown paper wrapper treatment.

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

They seemed to be included under any tag I'd expect:
# Fiction (33)
# Society, Politics & Philosophy (27)
# Gay & Lesbian (26)
# Health, Family & Lifestyle (26)
# Poetry, Drama & Criticism (9)
# Reference (2)
# Science Fiction & Fantasy (2)
# Romance (5)
# History (3)
# Study Books (5)
# Music, Stage & Screen (2)
# Children's Books (1)
# Humour (1)
# Science & Nature (1)

I didn't see a limitation, there.

[darkhavens.livejournal.com]

Those aren't the tags, they're amazon's 'departments'. The tags are on each individual product page, down below the product details and description. Anyone with an account can add tags to an item. These tags are the ones that are apparently being used as filters.

I've just run a search for Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain and of the first 8 items on the results page, only one has been tagged as 'gay', and that only by one person, and I'm just suspicious enough of the human race to believe that that was done by some empowered bigot who's seen the news and thought 'Hey, finally! A way to get rid of all that obscenity that's ruining my Amazon fun!' and promptly gone on a tagging spree.

I know that on Amazon.com there's been a tagging spree using 'amazonfail' so, yeah, you can bet your bippy there are people out there tagging stuff as 'gay' in the hopes it will disappear.

Only one single person thought one Brokeback Mountain book (actually ""Brokeback Mountain": Story to Screenplay") should be categorised as gay? Really? Or are the rest of them just hidden from view?

I'm not snipping and snarling at you, darlin', I'm just raging at Amazon, and at the mentality that allows this to happen. Grrrrr Arrrrgh.

*smooch*

[darkhavens.livejournal.com]

Metadata info (http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/12/amazon-possibly-using-category-metadata-to-filter-rankings/) on 'filtered' books. Ecucational, but not helping the rage. ;)