Amazon Says Error Removed Listings ("Homosexual" books moved to adult listing)

[underpants]

Source: NY Times

In response to nearly two days of angry online commentary, particularly on Twitter, Amazon.com said on Monday that “an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error” had caused thousands of books on its site to lose their sales rankings and become harder to find in searches.

Most of the company’s online critics complained that the problem appeared to have a disproportionate effect on gay and lesbian themed books, leading to cries of censorship.

Mr. Mendelsohn pointed out that books like “American Psycho,” a novel with sexually and violently explicit content, did not lose its sales rank. He teamed up with others affected by the problem, including the playwright and author Larry Kramer, to start a petition to boycott Amazon. As of Monday afternoon it had attracted more than 18,000 names.

Even after it explained the scope of the problem, Amazon continued to face criticism for its slow and limited response to the online blowup, particularly at a time when sites like Twitter can so easily accelerate and amplify a public outcry.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/technology/internet/14amazon.html?hp

[Twinguard]

1. WTF is up with the Amazon?

I seem to remember that during the campaign, an amazon search for "terrorist costumes" brought up Barack Obama halloween masks.

This is the kind of crap that makes me not buy anything from Amazon.

[underpants]

2. For a long time I have had the opinion that Amazon doesn't have control of their site

too much going on there for there to be adequate control

[Twinguard]

4. Maybe they should take control of their site.

I'm sure they can find a few bucks in their budget to hire someone to keep things organized and civil on their website. Amazon is a strictly online business, and a pretty successful one from what I hear. It sounds the same to me as if a brick and mortar store were to hide merchandise from their customers. That seems like a poor business model, and one that is destined for FAIL.
If they do have a problem with some of the merchandise they sell for whatever reason, why not either: A) make a special category for it or B) stop carrying it. To carry it and hide it just seems dumb to me.

[realisticphish]

3. keep in mind

that there are user meta-tags. Think of google bombing... organized groups of people can do the same thing with meta-tags

[Posteritatis]

7. People need to remember this

A lot of the outrage is from people who seem to think that Bezos is personally directing this stuff from his mountaintop fortress or something, when it's mostly their neighbors or Turkish high school students or something. Folks really need to turn off their autopilot and try to understand some of this stuff before they start crusading.

[BamaGirl]

5. It's more than glbt books

Several of mine were effected, and many other erotic writers that aren't strictly m/m books. Lots of non-fiction too. It's crazy. I've spent a lot of money over the years at Amazon. I'd like to believe this was a fuck up. I'd like to believe they're gonna fix it. But this crap is impacting my income and it's hard to give them them the benefit of the doubt when they issue half-assed apologies.

[mainer]

6. Yep, some thriller novels lost their sales indexes for a day.

And they had no erotic content at all. These glitches happen from time to time, affecting a wide variety of titles, but this is the first time I've heard it attributed to an sort of bias.

[FreeState]

8. The reason its being attributed to bias is Amazons initial response to the authors

when authors contacted Amazon they were told their works were potentially offensive due to sexual content - even though there was no erotica or sexuality in many of the authors works -that was Amazons official reply in the beginning.

Amazon not only needs a new system they need a new PR team IMO.