Epic fail, Amazon

[darkravenette]

I'm posting this here and leaving it unlocked. Google bomb, away!

Amazon Rank | What this is all about

I love their "it's just a glitch" excuse. Despite the fact that they've been stripping GLBT titles of their ranks since Feb, and leaving other "adult" titles alone.

Comments

[trwhiplash]

I don't have a link for it, but I was linked to an LJ post about this while discussing it with a friend yesterday that put forth a pretty interesting theory.

It basically said that, because content is flagged as appropriate/inappropriate based on some kind of user vote system, what might be happening is that some conservative group is going around flagging all of these books as inappropriate, and because it's an automated system it's allowing it.

Amazon's owner is a pretty liberal dude and it's centered in a pretty liberal town, so it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that they'd be doing this.

[darkravenette]

I've seen that post too, and I really, REALLY want to hope that it's someone exploiting the system. That I'd actually be less upset about.

But it's not uniform. As shown on the site, one of the authors whose ranking was killed received a response from Amazon saying "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 also be excluded from that feature." Meanwhile, Ron Jeremy's biography kept its rank and remained in search results.

[martenb]

I've gotten reliable scuttle that the glitch thing is legit. http://www.lilithsaintcrow.com/journal/2009/04/idosyncratic-code-amazonfail/

Short version: French Amazon team member confuses the English word "Adult" (which gets blocked" and the word "Sexuality." Pushes it to the whole site, SNAFU. Corroborated from another Amazon insider who couldn't confirm details but verified the glitch thing.

Having seen the inside of a(n admittedly smaller) major online retailer I can absolutely buy that a weird, goofy bit of internal-use-only software could lead to trouble like this.

If this is the case, it most likely means the stuff from Feb was either unrelated or a much smaller scale mixup.

[martenb]

This would also explain the CS response. I'd bet anything the CS agent just sees a little tag that says "Material Flagged Adult" or some damn thing and pops off a script.

[karlean7]

I am pretty sure that Amazon is not directly responsible for it. That is to say, I am pretty sure that it's not a policy decision from the higher ups.

My guess is either what Whiplash posted, or even possibly that some conservative disgruntled employee was going through these books on the downlow and marking them as "adult". Or whatever.