Comments | kit_the_brave: Amazon is Rank

kit_the_brave

Amazon is Rank

Apr 12, 2009 21:53

OK, I love Amazon normally. But removing the rankings from GLBT books so that they don't appear in search results - even GLBT books with very little sexual content - (while leaving Playboy rankings) is just wrong. So... Googlebomb ( Read more... )

Comments 5

sleepingfingers April 13 2009, 03:00:53 UTC

This is the first time I've seen Googlebomb in use.

stubefied_by_gd April 13 2009, 04:36:06 UTC

Did they really do that? For bad reasons? I guess I'm too nice-thinking, because before I understood about searches and just saw they'd taken off rankings, I thought maybe there were mean people going around and ranking all the books really low and so they took away the ranks altogether. Is there anything else un-ranked?

kit_the_brave April 13 2009, 15:19:22 UTC

I read the mean people theory online too, because it does seem weird of Amazon to do something like that. The trouble with the mean people theory is that while you can leave a review of a specific book, there's no way for users to rank books low or remove rankings or even complain about a specific book that I can see. Someone suggested that maybe Amazon removes rankings for books that get a lot of complaints, but I can't imagine that, since Ann Coulter, anything Republican/Democratic, etc. probably get a lot of complaints but are also popular.

Here's a link to Mark Probst, a YA author whose book got stripped of ranking and who Amazon told it was because "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." But they seem to be using "adult" to mean GLBT. As of last night, Heather Has Two Mommies didn't have rankings, whereas "Playboy: The Complete ( ... )

stubefied_by_gd April 13 2009, 17:26:01 UTC

People are so weird. It just boggles my mind. Not even from a censorship-is-bad standpoint, but from a of-all-the-things-to-"protect"-us-from-you-choose-this? standpoint.

stubefied_by_gd April 14 2009, 02:56:45 UTC

I'm guessing you've seen the good news that Amazon is fixing this and that there is a good chance it was just a big mistake. Yay!