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Oh, no, Amazon...
Apr. 13th, 2009 09:39 amThe blogosphere is abuzz with the Amazon Agenda. Someone, somewhere, appointed themselves NetNanny and decided to "protect" their "customer base" against oogy oogy things they really ought not to know about. Amazon has since been quoted as saying several things in response to their stripping the ranking - and therefore search visibility - from books with GLBT themes, none of which really hold water. One response apparently really did haul out the "protecting the poor innocent gullible public from themselves" card. Another blamed it all on a "computer glitch" (a damned specific one, if you ask me, since someone pointed out that you COULD get a book on homosexuality if you searched on the term... a how-to book for parents on how to prevent same in their kids... pretty amazing targeted glitch, that...)
Thanks, Amazon. As a member of that public, and one who has spent a considerable amount of money at your website, may I just say that I am a grown-up who is capable of filtering my own searches. If I find something offensive, I am generally not found typing that term into search engines, and I suspect that applies to most normal sane adults. If someone actively goes seeking something they find offensive, well, it's THEIR problem, not yours. And protecting kids - from any material deemed not suitable for them - is, frankly, the responsibility of those children's parents, and not that of a public-access bookstore.
Nobody appointed you net-cop for public morality, Amazon. And the fact that you have now cut a swathe across the board - from luminous writers who happen to be gay like Nicola Griffith to classics in the genre whose only connection to GBLT themes is tenuous at best - and left behind for free oogling anything from bestiality (so long as it's heterosexual, I assume) to collections of centerfold pics of Playmates Past to stuff that typifies political movements which have been the basis for large-scale global wars... well, that's not a glitch by any kind of definition that I know of. It smacks of deliberate action. They also (I haven't looked, but I assume) left up Harry Potter. Hey, Amazon, DUMBLEDORE WAS GAY. The author said so. Strip those books of their rankings forthwith, right now, or stand revealed as an utter hypocrite.
What does it feel like, oh great liberal bastion of Amazon, to have IOWA be more progressive than you are?... Think about that one, do. Think about the image you are projecting here. Also think about the sort of image you would be projecting if you allowed some peon who doesn't happen to believe in the Holocaust to strip the rankings of anything and everything to do with Judaica because of, er, I don't know, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Or someone who thinks that the institution of slavery is just fine and dandy, and strips the rankings of anything that touches on the opposite idea... including such stuff as books by Mark Twain.
It's Easter weekend, and it's entirely possible that someone somewhere was using an opportunity here to push something through that the higher-ups would not have wanted or sanctioned. I will hold that opinion until the first actual business day following this mess, i.e. tomorrow - I would like to give Amazon, as a whole, a chance to deal with the fallout; at the very least, a restitution of the status quo and a seriously abject apology is in order. I will be keeping an eye on Amazon for this. But if I see no signs of life by Wednesday morning - well - Amazon, you will have "protected" at least this member of the public out of your customer pool. I am not precisely the "target audience" for this, but if I know that at least one class of books is being hidden from me because someone else thinks I ought not to know about their existence how do I trust that other classes are not likewise concealed and that my choice of reading matter is not being censored by the place I am buying books from? If I do not trust you to let me choose my own books, Amazon, why would I trust you with my dollars?
Get it right. MAKE it right. Or face the consequences.
EDIT
There is a report of an explanation and an apology.
( The apology )
( The explanation )
( The conclusions )
Thanks, Amazon. As a member of that public, and one who has spent a considerable amount of money at your website, may I just say that I am a grown-up who is capable of filtering my own searches. If I find something offensive, I am generally not found typing that term into search engines, and I suspect that applies to most normal sane adults. If someone actively goes seeking something they find offensive, well, it's THEIR problem, not yours. And protecting kids - from any material deemed not suitable for them - is, frankly, the responsibility of those children's parents, and not that of a public-access bookstore.
Nobody appointed you net-cop for public morality, Amazon. And the fact that you have now cut a swathe across the board - from luminous writers who happen to be gay like Nicola Griffith to classics in the genre whose only connection to GBLT themes is tenuous at best - and left behind for free oogling anything from bestiality (so long as it's heterosexual, I assume) to collections of centerfold pics of Playmates Past to stuff that typifies political movements which have been the basis for large-scale global wars... well, that's not a glitch by any kind of definition that I know of. It smacks of deliberate action. They also (I haven't looked, but I assume) left up Harry Potter. Hey, Amazon, DUMBLEDORE WAS GAY. The author said so. Strip those books of their rankings forthwith, right now, or stand revealed as an utter hypocrite.
What does it feel like, oh great liberal bastion of Amazon, to have IOWA be more progressive than you are?... Think about that one, do. Think about the image you are projecting here. Also think about the sort of image you would be projecting if you allowed some peon who doesn't happen to believe in the Holocaust to strip the rankings of anything and everything to do with Judaica because of, er, I don't know, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Or someone who thinks that the institution of slavery is just fine and dandy, and strips the rankings of anything that touches on the opposite idea... including such stuff as books by Mark Twain.
It's Easter weekend, and it's entirely possible that someone somewhere was using an opportunity here to push something through that the higher-ups would not have wanted or sanctioned. I will hold that opinion until the first actual business day following this mess, i.e. tomorrow - I would like to give Amazon, as a whole, a chance to deal with the fallout; at the very least, a restitution of the status quo and a seriously abject apology is in order. I will be keeping an eye on Amazon for this. But if I see no signs of life by Wednesday morning - well - Amazon, you will have "protected" at least this member of the public out of your customer pool. I am not precisely the "target audience" for this, but if I know that at least one class of books is being hidden from me because someone else thinks I ought not to know about their existence how do I trust that other classes are not likewise concealed and that my choice of reading matter is not being censored by the place I am buying books from? If I do not trust you to let me choose my own books, Amazon, why would I trust you with my dollars?
Get it right. MAKE it right. Or face the consequences.
EDIT
There is a report of an explanation and an apology.
( The apology )
( The explanation )
( The conclusions )