Reply From Amazon

[snowe]

This just popped up in my inbox:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Amazon.com.

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles - in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories

Comments

[snowe]

It seems a bit too...coincidental that only the progressive/feminist/pro-gay stuff was affected. :(

[sassette82]

So many random and various things lost their rankings, I definitely think *something* went wrong when they were trying to censor adult material. In the original post, Amazon sent an email saying they were excluding "adult" material -http://markprobst.livejournal.com/15293.html. In the letter they sent you, they never said they weren't de-ranking books, just that they de-ranked too many. I still won't be shopping there.

I don't know anything about this weev guy, except he seems like he wasn't hugged enough as a child.

[sassette82]

Have you seen this explanation of what happened: http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archives/166329.asp?source=mypi

I was trying to look up what standards Amazon uses to determine what it considers adult content and I could find it on their site.

[sassette82]

could NOT find it.

[snowe]

I just don't understand why they'd derank adult stuff at all. They sell sex toys, for heaven's sake! Any kid can go into any grocery store or bookstore and buy smutty romance novels and no one will say a word. But, when it's online, it's suddenly a problem.

[seeds_of_peace]

I love how your journal is always cut with "may not be appropriate for minors under the age of 14" when i'm not logged in :P

I think it was done intentionally! but perhaps not by the upper amazon staff.. perhaps a bigoted search engine optimization programmer!

[snowe]

I wouldn't want any preteens to be traumatized by my lj!

This whole thing is just...weird. Why derank "adult" stuff to begin with?

[jaded_believer]

I think it doesn't matter; it still looks bad, it's still going to lose business for them, and whether or not they actually harbored any prejudice in the first place the backlash is probably going to correct whatever harm it might have done in the future anyway.