Amazon.com anti-GLBT "Glitch" Infuriates Web 2.0 Denizens

SEATTLE, WA -- While possible investors and developers puzzle over what can be done with the powerful social networking possibilities inherent in Twitter.com, online retail and resale giant Amazon.com has (hopefully) learned a few things about the tech toy's ability to spread the word. In the case of Amazon.com, the word from sex-positive netizens during Easter Sunday was decidedly "FAIL."

The wave of negativity on Facebook.com and Twitter was motivated by a mass de-listing of any book that dealt even vaguely with sexuality -- especially GLBT sexuality. In some cases books that suddenly had no ranking including nothing more subversive than an openly gay author.

Although site visitors could easily find Ron Jeremy: The Hardest Working Man in Showbiz or A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality, books by esteemed sexuality authors, educators and editors including Rachel Kramer Bussel, Tristan Taormino and Audacia Ray -- as well as mainstream but gay names like Gore Vidal, Stephen Fry and Ellen DeGeneres -- required considerably more research to locate.

For reasons that are obvious, difficult to locate books are also more difficult to sell. This is bad news in nearly any time, but in economic times that squeeze everyone and have further injured sagging book sales, becoming invisible can be a literary death sentence.

Explanations from Amazon have been unconvincing, with the situation being blamed on a "glitch" by some representatives while a form letter from the company insists the action took place "in consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude 'adult' material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must be excluded from that feature."

"Glitch or not, my erotica books still have no rankings," Bussel complained via Twitter, adding the hash tags, #glitchmyass and #amazonfail to drive home her point.

Writer, editor and Signet Press publisher Cecilia Tan observed that, "Wow, I didn't always think Amazon was *awesome* but now they are actively *evil,*" and promised to remove her associate links with the site. Later, she provided information to others keen to follow her lead.

Ironically, although visitors looking for books on recovering from rape will have a tough time finding appropriate titles due to the de-listing, they can easily locate anti-homosexual books, Playboy centerfold calendars and a wide variety of sex toys.

Although this is the first time that such a mass vanishing of even potentially homoerotic content has taken place on Amazon.com, a variety of writers, including gay memoir author Craig Seymour, took this opportunity to observe that it's not the first time such works have been re-categorized as "adult," thus making access to interested customers and accurate cross-promotion and accounting of sales problematic.

The move, whether "glitch" or free speech stifling business policy, has inspired protest petitions, threats of Google bombs and calls for a boycott of the website that currently ranks Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion but not Brokeback Mountain, Heather Has Two Mommies, Fanny Hill or Lady Chatterley's Lover.

Amazon representative Patty Smith has informed CNET News that in spite of the form letter's insistence concerning protecting visitors from unsavory content, Essentially, there's a glitch in our system and it's being fixed."

What circumstances brought about the "glitch" are unknown.

Meanwhile, four U.S. states have legalized same-sex marriage, others are exploring the possibility and Portland Oregon's "city of books," Powells.com, is rapidly gaining subscribers.

(Originally published on YNOT.com)

Comments

[AntsyAmerican]

Ms. Reed, you wrote:

"Explanations from Amazon have been unconvincing, with the situation being blamed on a "glitch" by some representatives while a form letter from the company insists the action took place "in consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude 'adult' material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must be excluded from that feature."

Your language suggests that those two statements from Amazon are contradictory. They aren't.

The form letter "insists" (strange wording on your part given a boilerplate form letter) is that ADULT FILTERING PER SE is done in consideration of the entire customer base. The glitch, on the other hand, consisted of inapproprate categories and/or tags in the adult filter.

Nobody has produced communication from Amazon stating that they as a company consider the affected subject matter to be adult material comparable to pornography. In fact, they have stated the opposite by calling it a glitch and worse. Yet many in this twit-storm insist they've caught Amazon in a flip-flop.

Are you confused, or are you being disingenuous to keep the social media outcry going? Whether this is sloppy writing or intentional deception, it is misleading. If the goal is other than preaching to the choir, this practice should stop.

Those of us who work on large, complex websites understand exactly how a glitch can indeed cause this.

[KenTao]

*
My theory is that the people who started and continue to operate Amazon never truly "got" the whole internet thing. I was a very excited and enthusiastic buyer on amazon when they first started up, but I've watched them mismanage and seriously drop-the-ball so much over the years that I no longer deal with them at all. I figure that they got so big so fast that they began to think that could do anything and get away with it; i.e., continue running the business like it was just another corporate welfare sucking profits-at­-all-costs monster instead of a truly healthy webcentric entity.

Just one of the extremely stupid management mistakes they've made has been to not except Paypal as a payment method. Excuse me? You want to pretend that you're an Internet company and yet you won't take Paypal? At first I thought it was because they made stupid deals with the credit card companies who, of course, don't want folks buying stuff without a huge interest rate. Then I found out it's because they think of ebay as their competition. That tired old 19th century thinking is what the internet was invented to overcome. Sorry, Bezos, that was the last straw for me.

I have no doubt that this anti-gay "glitch" is entirely intentional. That's exactly the kind of backward thinking company amazon is.

Earthlings Unite!
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[leorising]

Great post, Theresa. ^_^

I think our greatest problem going forward is convincing large corporations like Amazon that the multi-pronged web-founded protest is not a fringe phenomenon. The Amazon vs. LGBT protest has not been carried out by stoned teen rebels eating Twinkies, huddled in front of their laptops in their mothers' dark basements; these protestors are Amazon's customers and investors every bit as much as Ma and Pa in Wichita. Reminds me of Obama laughing off the townhall question about legalizing marijuana -- just a quick brushoff of a "minority" view, chalk it up to an Intarwebs "glitch." We have to hit Our Would-Be Corporate Masters -- from banks to bookstores -- in the pocketbook, where it counts, by withholding sales and investment dollars. We must make a concerted effort to withhold our money and support from these robber barons, in addition to signing petitions and blogging and tweeting.

I'll be interested to see just how badly this bad move on Amazon's part translates to lost sales at the end of the month. And whether or not it will be a sustained loss for them, as well.

[traveller77]

Glitches happen, but this is a very odd glitch. I don't think it was an accident.

First, they had to manually categorize books they wanted to delete -- it isn't possible to run a computer script to just automatically select "gay-friendly" books. Then they had to eliminate searches on their target book titles, which meant rewriting a lot of separate programming scripts. Then they had to modify a new scripts that flawlessly assembled a brand-new list of books they wanted to include. Finally, they had to test their new system to make sure it ran flawlessly... They must have tested all this, because the process did in fact run flawlessly when it went 'live' this weekend. My conclusion is that this was a business practice, not a glitch.

Amazon regularly takes advantage of sellers, partners and visitors, and sells its email addresses to spammers. We need a website called www.amazonsucks.org where we can collect info on what they do.

I do business with Amazon partly because I have to and partly because Barnes and Noble has been even worse. I prefer Powells books in Portland (or other independent booksellers) even though Powell's service is usually slower and their prices are usually higher. Their reviews are better, and I can put in an advance reserve with them for used books I'm interested in.

tt77

[rainbowblue]

yes it is possible to do a seach. All the material is tagged, probably both pubic and internally. It is very easy to run a search looking for tags.


of course it wasn't just lgbt material...