*glares sternly through internet connection*

[alexandraerin]

So, if you go to Amazon.com and you do a search for "homosexuality", the number one result right now is that much-loved family classic A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. The search result orders are based on sales ranks, so clearly this is the most popular book about homosexuality, right?

Either that or there's some kind of horrendous double-standard in play where books dealing with the topic in a positive or even neutral light are being suppressed or stricken from the rankings while garbage like this is being left in for the world to see.

But that couldn't be it, could it?

*nervous laughter*

The AP has published a piece calling it a "glitch", but the blogosphere has a different name for it: Amazon Fail. Do a Google search for that and you'll find all kinds of stuff, including summaries of what was removed (books about queer folk, books by queer folk, books about feminism, romance involving GLBT characters, autobiographies, etc.) All supposedly removed for being "adult".

Glitch? They may not have fully scoped out the consequences of this policy, but this wasn't a computer zigging where it should have zagged... books that have been ranked and listed forever were suddenly pulled, in a manner that is both sweeping and haphazard... so there had to have been human eyes and human hands involved in these removals. Amazon's responses to individual inquiries that have been posted around hasn't mentioned any glitch... they claim that these books are being removed from the rankings because they're adults. Even the "glitch" story mentions that an earlier individual case that this mass removal mirrors.

Heather Has Two Mommies is now an "adult" book. If you do a search for it, the only thing that comes up is a pre-order for an anniversary special edition that's not out yet. If that wasn't there, the number one result would be a book addressing the "controversy" of the book's very existence. You can still find the original book on the site if you click around (for instance, there are links to it from the special edition's page), but you'll note it doesn't list a sales rank for it. That's Amazon's method of making sure a product doesn't show up when you type it in the box at the top. Yes. Even if you're looking for that specific title. Granted there are parents out there who don't want their children reading it, but at the age the book is aimed at, the kid's not likely to be shopping on Amazon by themselves. Amazon has taken it upon themselves to decide the matter for all parents.

OH! While I was writing that paragraph, the special edition disappeared from the rank. The controversy write-up is now number one. That's a pretty dedicated glitch, Amazon! Other, less well-known gay parent books show up in the search results for that exact title, presumably because they're compared to it... this is what I meant by haphazard.

And you know what's really stupid about it? Do a search for "butt plug". You'd think a concentrated effort to screen for adult material would have taken care of things that only exist to serve adult purposes...

What can you do? Complain to Amazon. Post about this in your blog or on your twitter. Use the words "amazon fail" (and the Twitter hash tag "#amazonfail".) These things are tracked and trended, and Amazon is one of the venerable old dotcoms. If they don't pay attention to this shit, I don't know who does.

Comments

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

I was intrigued to read this theory (http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html), that would make Amazon the victim of a troll campaign - an outside group flagging GLBT content as adult en masse over a holiday weekend when presumably Amazon would be slower to fix things. That would explain you seeing another book drop from the rankings over the course of the weekend - I can't think of a good reason for Amazon to be doing this gradually now, unless they have some new Oh Noes Gay Might Get On My Shoe! intern on staff or something.

I've heard Amazon is looking in to it and going to provide a statement tomorrow. I'm going to sit on my angry letter another couple days to see what's going on. If it really is amazon deeming normal, loving homosexual relationships as pornographic, it's utterly reprehensible, but if they're being trolled, I don't wanna feed it.

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

Even if that proves true, I think a bit of stink-raising is still appropriate, because if they don't know that they stand to lose more standing (and money!) they have no real incentive to treat that as trolling instead of an indicator of where the market is. It's also a good way of giving other sellers out there an object lesson on the dubious "benefits" of trying to pretend a major section of the market doesn't exist.

[tenshininareru.livejournal.com]

So what if they are being trolled? If they are, then the trolls want to fix the problem too. Say what you will about internet trolls, but the good ones can often achieve some real progress.

Works like this:
Troll sees something that isn't quite right, like Amazon's "Adult" content.
Troll thinks "This will be lots of lulz to mess with this."
Media complains that Amazon is banning gay content.
Amazon comes back next week and says "Now the button will just flag it for us to look at and see if it's Adult Content."
Trolls laugh.
???
Profit.

Skip step 3, and Amazon has no reason to change anything. Sure, it keeps the trolls away from the lulz, and that make keep them from breeding. Maybe they eat lulz, I don't know.

What is also amusing, and something that should be considered by anyone upset that Amazon might possibly be censoring anything, is the thought that the queer trolls might be able to take this further than Amazon. Imagine a trolling group countering every move by the real anti-gay trolls; the ones that send letters to restaurants or commercials who happen to have a known gay actor walking in the background or, heaven forbid, using the product being sold. Picture those corporations being flooded with letters every time they dare to use a straight actor, how dare they insult the queer community like that.

It's a lovely picture.

[maggs-07.livejournal.com]

Just because I had to see for myself, I looked up butt plug since I had previously looked up homosexuality in a rage from reading a post similar to this earlier. The same smut smattered results are there for porn as well. According to Amazon Girls Gone Wild, dildos, and butt plugs are less offensive than gblt books.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Try looking for "Heather Has Two Mommies" on amazon.co.uk.

[rocza.livejournal.com]

Apparently we must all be protected from Foucault, as well. (Not to mention Judith Butler, one of the sweetest women ever.) Admittedly, I've had students who've felt that way... but seriously? Seriously? (Other reports are saying that disability books are being caught up in this, as well.)

...

[sephiraraynes.livejournal.com]

"(Other reports are saying that disability books are being caught up in this, as well.)"

What the crap.

[zathras-ix.livejournal.com]

For what it may be worth, butt plugs aren't exclusively homosexual toys and, in fact, the review comments posted about many of the items are from ostensibly "satisfied" heterosexual customers.

Assholes are like opinions in that everyone has one. :D

If the "glitch" is indeed targeting GLBT, then the inclusion of items that are associated with GLBT sex but are purchased and perhaps ever popular with sexual adventurous heterosexuals would seem to support the hypothesis that items that would only be of interest to GLBT or those curious about same are indeed being systematically excluded.

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

Oh, I wasn't saying butt plugs are homosexual toys... I was saying they're adult ones. The fact that sex toys are still openly ranked should put paid to any idea that there was an overly broad attempt to purge adult material that caught up all this other content... not when the purge was decidedly narrow.

[zathras-ix.livejournal.com]

I appear to have expressed myself poorly, because the point I was trying to make was the same as your own.

A butt plug is an anal sex toy and anal sex, despite its unexpected appeal to heterosexuals, is inextricably linked in the popular imagination with male homosexuality. I'm tempted to say that anal sex has made gay males the butt of jokes for some time, hence terms like "butt pirate" and the like. Even so, "heterosexual sodomy" has had a long and storied history (it's what Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant meant when he sang "I want to be your back door man" in Whole Lotta Love) and the butt plug as been as much of a heterosexual "marital aid" as the vibrator.

The fact that the butt plug links, a big draw for straights, were preserved DESPITE the association of anal sex with gays is supporting evidence for the hypothesis that the "adult" classification and the attendant removal from search results is indeed targeted at products considered to be "exclusively" LGBT.

actually, it's probably a combination

[akailaughingman.livejournal.com]

of computer doing "what it's told" and not what was intended...
and some bit of code that should have been tested before release.

It seems like something had rather unintended consequences... (they don't get money from stuff that customers can't find)

amazon's own statement:
In fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as health, mind and body, reproductive and sexual medicine, and erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search.

In short, a big collossal fuckup. But once and done is fine by me... This is unlike woot.com, which regularly sets their computers on fire during Woot-Offs (I'm told that each time their server crashes, they find a new company. Still keep on burning though)

[natalief.livejournal.com]

http://natalief.livejournal.com/1158712.html