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

[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. ;)