Slowly the Internet is taking over my life...

[teirkin]

The spheres of my life are colliding, y'all.

After all the uproar of the Amazon Fail bullshit exploding on my friends page earlier this week, I go to class and we end up reading an article about it and discussing it in terms of the ethics of cataloging.

What is going on with my life?

Comments

[shugard]

Huh?

[teirkin]

Here's a good BBC article explaining what happened: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8000401.stm

Basically Amazon instituted some really screwed up "filtering" policies that ended up removing thousands of books from search results -- and a suspicious proportion were LGBTQ-themed. People got pissed, and Amazon responded very poorly, saying it was a "glitch" but not really explaining what was going on. I think it's largely been resolved, but it's really harmed Amazon's reputation, and rightly so. Even if it just came down to a problematic algorithm, someone had to write it in the first place, and somewhere along the line bias became policy. Not okay.

[shugard]

I suppose I should have noticed the link. Yeah that is a serious fail, and I thought amazon was a progressive new-age hippie company.

[teirkin]

I know, right? It's so disappointing of them. That's like Google committing some evil faux-pas and belying their benign facade. (Btw, I added the link in after your comment--meant to post one in the first place but was rushed.)