Big companies are crazy. I hope no one gets fired, this is just the sort of thing that can happen when you have product managers, coders, legal, QA, multiple languages…its really not a shock. I’ve seen very similar things happen and blow up into a shitstorm for the same reason.

In a similar situation someone wrote a strongly worded letter to legal at a big internet company I worked at. The legal person referred the issue to a low-end quality engineer in asia. The engineer made a tiny change, without realizing that it was a huge, sweeping change that ought to have run by PR, executives, PR etc. Shitstorm ensues. It happens. The alternative is insane restrictions on any action, which totally gum up corporate response. Further, as if amazon can really eliminate the adult classification. Its a liability thing, they don’t want to get sued.

what could they get sued for? if i understand correctly, they have not had the “adult” classification up until this weekend, and yet have avoided any lawsuits…

seriously, i know the usa is litigious, but i don’t think “my kid saw a porn book for sale on your website” qualifies as an actual tort.

Which is the objection to any acknowledgment in schools that gay people exist, because a man loving a man or a woman loving a woman is sexual, which is completely inappropriate for tender ears.  The fact that a woman (mommy) and a man (daddy) love each other is totally not sexual, and is thus just peachy for all ages.

The fact that a woman (mommy) and a man (daddy) love each other is totally not sexual, and is thus just peachy for all ages.

Which is remarkable, because if you think about it, there’s no proof that any two given gay people have had sex or done anything remotely sexual, even if they’re dating or married.  Whereas if there’s a mommy and a daddy, there’s absolute PROOF that there has been sex.

Okay, not absolute with IVF and such, but still.

So you don’t think that none of this controversy has anything to do with the fact that bloggers and commenters all over the internet completely freaked out and overreacted yesterday, and now are too stubborn to backtrack at all? It’s easier to act like there’s a huge systematic system of oppression that amazon.com thinks is more important than selling books? If everyone was really honest with themselves, I think they’d realize that after what they were convinced of yesterday, there was no explanation that would allow them to release that anger. Rather than a lesson on systematic oppression, don’t you think a better moral is that everyone shouldn’t go batshit crazy immediately over an issue that had one, that is ONE piece of real evidence (the February e-mail from that dude) and a shit load of pure conjecture, and instead at least wait a few hours before completely making up your minds on the issue? Seriously, did everyone at least go to Amazon yesterday and check the catalog for themselves? Does everyone have at least a rudimentary sense of how cataloging works? I read Amanda’s latest blog entry and I literally went directly from there to Amazon to buy stuff, just to protest her over the top, reactionary drifting towards hysterical follow up. Maybe amazon should just completely eliminate all user review based ratings. I would rather see that than have to wade through another fabricated blogosphere shitstorm. Of course I’m not suggesting that there is a huge problem with homophobia, sexism, a general asshole-ishness on the part of a huge chunk of the world. But seriously, sometimes a mistake really is just a mistake.

I’m still assuming it was intentional.  Take the old story of GM and their “failed” attempt at selling the Chevy Nova in Mexico.  It’s an urban legend about the idiocy of large corporations.  “Nova” and “no va” are way different and “nova” is a word that’s been accepted into Spanish thanks the scientific applications.  That said, I’m still assuming it was intentional and was a gross misjudgement.  I think that they really just don’t care about women, gays, or teens; or that they think conservatives have more/better money.  That last point is weird, though, because with the exception of their leadership (I use the term loosely), most conservatives seems to be fucking dirt farmers.

fidelito—do you REALLY think that amazon would have been so quick to attempt to fix things (whether intentional or not) without the shitstorm? i’m glad that people were paying attention, and that amazon was held accountable—because while the intent behind this mistake/glitch/cataloguing-screw-up may not have been nefarious or discriminatory, the EFFECTS certainly were. the delisting/deranking needs to be fixed, and i have no confidence that it would be without feet being held to the fire.

Spooky Skeptic—Forget the Nova. Why would you want to chew gum that has a name that literally translates to “Three teeth” ?

I think that a lawsuit is very much a possibility—Amazon pulling this arbitrary deranking translates directly into dollars lost by the publisher and the author. You can’t sue Amazon for being mean to the feminists and the gay people, but you can sue if the de-listing of the books breaches some sort of contract that the publishing company held with the retailer regarding availability of the materials.

I’m of two minds about the firing thing. Definitely don’t fire the techs who were just programming what they were told to program. As for the PR department or the managers who dreamed this nonsense up ... well, I hate to think of anyone being fired in this economy, but on the other hand, I’m sure there are more competent people out there who need a job desperately and could do a sight better than what was done here. But the wonderful part of this quandry is… it’s not my decision.

I suppose fidelito just quit his job to protest taxes ... and just laid off a redheaded woman who looked too liberal and donated her salary to Palin.

Uhhh huh.

sophiefair, apparently they’d been toying with “adult classification” for at least the past month or two, it just didn’t explode until this weekend.

Even if the problem was just that some poor non-English-speaker got told once that “So in English x has connotations of y…” and believed it, and this has nothing to do with even one mole/troll/wingnut programmer inside Amazon, I can definitely see that even that level of miscommunication is indicative of cultural Issues with a capital I. But I’m not going to pick on “Amazon” as an entity for that, not even a little bit, until I have some proof or even hint that their policy was in any way, shape or form created or authorized within that framework, which we currently don’t have. At all. So far, all of Amazon’s dumb seems to be on the side of negligence rather than ideology.

...Now, if whoever implemented or authorized those tags did, in fact, have more than basic knowledge of the English language, I do hope they can his/her/its ass. But I just can’t see that being very many or very important people.

So, the $64,000 question ... should I continue to shop through Amazon? Or not?

chingona:

Well… I don’t speak for everyone else here. I will continue to, but then I sent them several nasty notes, the latest pointing out that their most recent response, being a wishy-washy admission of fault, is *barely* adequate.

I mean, I’m not happy with them, but I’m a Vine reviewer, so I get to soak them for shipping costs on some of my orders, so that makes me a bit of a special case.

mighty ponygirl—i absolutely agree with you about the lawsuit comment. my first remark was more directed to stephen who seemed to think that amazon brought this mess down on themselves in an attempt to avoid liability/lawsuits—for what, i don’t exactly understand. zie further seems to believe that they cannot get rid of this noxious “adult” classification without risking further (though to this point, it would seem, non-existent) lawsuits, presumably brought by parents so inept at supervising their children that said tykes were exposed to the titles/cover-art of some kind of “adult” material on amazon.  i am not familiar with the american legal system, but i simply cannot see a “harm” there, as i understand the term.

chingona—i wouldn’t. i am unimpressed with the response. honesty and timeliness are important in the management of a crisis, and amazon seems to have failed utterly on both counts. i would rather spend my money elsewhere. again, it feels like they wouldn’t have done anything about this if it hadn’t blown up on the internet, and that they are kind of surprised by how fucked they are.

The more I think about it, the more this irritates me, because I think it may have been, to some extent another example of one of my greatest pet peeves.

There’s always been something about the whole “OMG!!! NEEDS TO BE KID FRIENDLY!!1!” thing that bugged me, but I could never quite get why until I read of criticism of CSI by the “Parents Television Council”, basically saying that it was kid-unfriendly. Well, duh. But, for fuck’s sake, it’s a crime show, one hour long, that airs at 9pm on school nights. And Miami and NY are on at <u>10pm</u>. Why would a child be watching it?!

Which, I realized, is what irritated me the most. There is no. reason. CSI needs to be kid-friendly. Adults are aloud to have non-G-rated entertainment. But, no. To some people the whole world must, at all times, be “kid friendly”. (With “kid friendly” occasionally being code “conforms to my bigoted opinions”.)

And this attitude seems to be at work here. Even if Amazon had reason to think kids should be browsing the site and thought that the original site had to be “cleaned up”, why like this? Why invade the adult-oriented site and remove the ability of adults to find non-“kid-friendly” material? Why not simple tag small-child-appropriate material as, like, “kids” and then create an “Amazon Kids” section that only displays “kids” tagged stuff? And leave the main site intact. Why did something like this need to be done?

As a mom of 3, can I just say

STOP TRYING TO MAKE THE WORLD SUPER SQUEAKY CLEAN FOR THEM.

That’s my job.  And it offends my religious beliefs to treat <strike>LGBTQI</strike> any people as subhuman.  I would much rather violence be shielded from their eyes than their fellow humans not harming each other.

Seriously?  Nudity?  Not a problem.  Objectification, even of fully-clothed people?  BIG problem.

You cannot please everyone, and fundy childrearing is considered abusive by most Child Services depts (you hit him with a stick as thick as your thumb?  Well good thing it’s your religion or you’d be going to jail!)  Don’t use those assholes as a global indicator of what is acceptable for a virtual storefront that is only to be used by adults (babies don’t have credit cards yet)

If they want to create children’s accounts for Christmas/birthday wish lists, fine.  Create junior accounts that are limited in their searches to toys and age-appropriate books.  Don’t fuck up the entire site b/c some parents are afraid to do their jobs.

To some people the whole world must, at all times, be “kid friendly”. (With “kid friendly” occasionally being code “conforms to my bigoted opinions”.)

This is the horse, not the cart. Considering what is and is not considered “appropriate” for children is a highly mutable set of ideals. In India, a parent would never kiss their child on the cheek on returning home from a business trip, because there is no such thing as a non-sexual kiss in India.  (A cursory google search showed that an Indian couple was recently acquitted for the crime of kissing each other near a train station—so it looks like my anthro prof was correct when describing this to us).

Pretending like there is some sort of objective, monolithic “adult” concept is laughable. Puritan families, more often than not, all shared the same bed together and mom and pop had furtive puritan sex while the kids were supposed to be asleep. Today, having sex with your kids in the bed would be the height of perverse, depraved sex.

Heather Has Two Mommies is a children’s book. It was written for children, with pictures. It’s not about lesbianism, it’s about a family that happens to have two women. And yet, because some people’s bigoted opinion registers anything attempting to describe homosexuality as “adult,” (because homosexuality is Only and Forever about SEX and not LOVE) this book was listed as an adult book and deranked. There is no measure by which you could declare that Heather Has Two Mommies contains material that is not suitable for children unless you feel that children should not know about same sex couples… which is bullcrap. The majority of Americans—while they may be confused about the details, do not consider homosexuality a sickness or an aberration, and feel no need to shield their children from a platonic depiction of a same sex couple.

The horse is the bigotry (I would say “puritanical ideals,” but I’ve already kicked that in the head upcomment), the cart is the concept of “kid friendly.”

I think that they really just don’t care about women, gays, or teens; or that they think conservatives have more/better money.

Honestly, my guess is more that they thought feminists and people into lgbt issues probably wouldn’t notice, or that there just aren’t that many customers in those groups as compared to customers in the ZOMG My Baby Might Teh Ghey If He Searches For Harry Potter*!!1!!11!!!! bracket.  Which goes back to Amanda’s larger point.  Feminist and LGBT interested people are seen as just a tiny minority, whereas being concerned about your child’s exposure to such people is considered the default. 

I also would guess that an element of this is that this sort of conservative tends to be a very squeaky wheel.  It’s interesting, actually, how good they are at this.  I’ve thought for a long time that part of the megachurch phenomenon is that it enables them to look like a much bigger presence than they actually are, because they have these HUGE honkin’ buildings with massive capacities and which claim extremely high numbers of attendees.  Except that when you look closer, you discover that these churches have very few committed members—most of the people who attend megachurches are either occasional attendees or one-off visitors. 

*And another thing - Dumbledore is gay!  If you’re worried that your kid might accidentally come across Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (which btw as far as I can remember doesn’t have any particularly graphic lesbian sex scenes, not to mention its totally innocuous title and cover design), shouldn’t you also be censoring the Potter series, too?

fidelito,

Your concern has been noted. Now go spend more money at Amazon—$50 per comment in this thread should be enough to teach Amanda a lesson.

The horse is the bigotry (I would say “puritanical ideals,” but I’ve already kicked that in the head upcomment), the cart is the concept of “kid friendly.”

In my experience, introducing “family-friendly” features is often done as a prelude to turning a formerly open service (e.g. the Web as we know it) into some sort of “walled garden,” (e.g. AOL), where alternative and indie (i.e. non big-corp) content is only available at a premium. The tiered cable television model we all loathe is the end result of such efforts.

I should be clear that don’t think Amazon was going for that here (at least in the short-term)—if anything, my guess is that they intended to make this feature a user-controlled individual filter for top-seller lists. The problem, as I noted in the earlier thread, was that it was mistakenly released into to the wild too soon and applied globally, and that the test case (or whatever it was) was heavy with the sort of systemic oppression Amanda describes—likely going on the assumption that the main users would be safety moms and fundies who equate “gay” and “feminist” with sexual libertines.

A cursory google search showed that an Indian couple was recently acquitted for the crime of kissing each other near a train station—so it looks like my anthro prof was correct when describing this to us

I’m not sure the sexualization of kissing is the reason why a parent wouldn’t kiss a child for a casual reason like coming home after being away for a few days.  Indian culture isn’t really big on casual physical affection, and people don’t kiss on the cheek as a greeting.  It’s like assuming that Europeans are a bunch of indiscriminate sluts because kissing on the cheek is a common greeting even for minor acquaintances.  Or assuming that because Americans say “hi” instead of “Good Day, Sir”, that we are all rude little twits who don’t respect each other.

Though your larger point about a cross-cultural approach to what “family-friendly” means is very apt—High School Musical would be considered Unspeakable Filth in certain parts of India due to the casual presentation of dating among teenagers, the scantily clad women, and probably kissing (I’m assuming there’s some relatively chaste kissing in those movies).

Send an email to Amazon. Warn them, gently, that if they continue with this restrictive search engine nonsense you will go elsewhere. Suggest the “Amazon Kids!” alternate site. If they keep getting emails, even after their “apology”, reminding them that ANY censorship is inappropriate, maybe they will get the message.

I just want to keep chiming in on a tagging system that has non-sexual scholarly books about homosexuality listed as adult while non-sexual books on curing homosexuality or Biblical condemnations of it are not.

Even IF the subject is inherently inappropriate for kids to the degree that the little darlings aren’t supposed to even be exposed to the concept, then that needs to be consistent.

It’s what’s getting lost as the news cycle winds down, and what will remain behind - “gay people are too over-sensitive and overreacted to this.”

Just imagine the shitstorm if every positive book on Christianity got deranked (including the Bible), and any search for Christianity brought up nothing but books by Richard Dawkins.

While I utterly utterly disagree that homosexuality (as opposed to explicit sexuality of any kind) is inappropriate for minors to have access to, if it is, then it needs to be consistent.

As the main post for the thread says, it is the systemic oppression inherent in this that is the most damning. There is no non-bigoted system that allows Heather Has Two Mommies to get deranked while the Playboy books and Curing Homosexuality books don’t. None.

The Opo—Any sort of kiss in public is considered an obscenity in India, so it’s a pretty straight line to draw a conclusion. But the “there’s no such thing as a non-sexual kiss” in India was what an anthro professor who studied. Now, he may be working off of old data, and I believe the culture is changing to be less restrictive on PDA, but the point wasn’t that Indians are a bunch of uptight prudes, it was that every culture has a different belief of what is considered appropriate behavior around children.

I’m pretty confused as to how my opinion that this was overblown translates into me donating money to Sarah Palin. But that’s cool. I shot out my knee jerk complaint e-mail to amazon just like everyone else. My point was that the histrionics were really over the top, it was pretty tough to find a blog that was talking about anything besides the Amazon fail that had been discovered like 15 hours earlier. I am not convinced that it was intentional, in fact quite the opposite. Some one show me the right wing God squad campaign against Amazon to do it. Or did Amazon just totally voluntarily hinder people from spending money there? And if we accept that it was an error, could we just wait until we hear some details before totally blowing up and going crazy? I really don’t think this is about making all of consumer America G-rated, or about Amazon being a bigoted company. I think it’s about instant information gratification and how that can sometimes be a really bad thing. p.s. As for my rhetoric about buying stuff from Amazon, I was planning to do that anyway, I just wrote that as a response to the countless comments yesterday that were something like this. “bull***t! amazon is run by right wing conservatives, and THAT is why lgbt literature was targeted….they lost MY business forever long ago—time for this disgusting “business” to go the way of other useless dot.coms!” Am I really that off-base to think that all of that sort of reaction is sort of ridiculous?

“So, the $64,000 question ... should I continue to shop through Amazon? Or not?”

I would say yes—haven’t seen anything in this whole situation that indicates honest to god malice on Amazon’s part, just a lot of confusion and ball-dropping.

but the point wasn’t that Indians are a bunch of uptight prudes, it was that every culture has a different belief of what is considered appropriate behavior around children.

Yeah, I definitely agree with that.  Indians don’t kiss “nonsexually”, at least in the sense that they don’t really tend to casually throw around physical affection.  However, I’m not sure the lack of the Euro-kiss greeting is because they sexualize all kisses, any more than the lack of a formal/spiritual/esoteric greeting like “Namaste” in American culture is because we are a bunch of crass godless idiots (or the presence of one in Indian culture is because they are on a higher spiritual plane).  They just don’t because they don’t.  It is what it is. 

Anyway, this is becoming a derail, and we both fundamentally agree.

So you don’t think that none of this controversy has anything to do with the fact that bloggers and commenters all over the internet completely freaked out and overreacted yesterday, and now are too stubborn to backtrack at all?

You’re right.  If we’d remembered our place—-and been grateful that they let us even read, for god’s sake—-none of this would have happened.

...just a lot of confusion and ball-dropping.

Which resulted from trying to implement something that they shouldn’t be doing at all. Somehow, many people still are missing this point.

Really? Are we going to start throwing around the omnipotent THEY? Am I now some sort of establishment shill because I think that it gets pretty hard to even read alot of blogs because there is nothing but total negativity that borders on vicious? I guess I’m just a baby. God forbid we have a real conversation, let’s just try to whiz everyone with sarcasm all day. Fun. I’ll just withdraw my point I guess. I hate those Amazon dicks. Yeah, let’s never ever shop there again. Jerks.

It’s vicious to call out a very powerful commercial organization when it engages in practices that endanger freedom of expression? Ok, anything you say, dude.

Holy shit @ the reaction to fidelito’s posts

“Which resulted from trying to implement something that they shouldn’t be doing at all. Somehow, many people still are missing this point.”

So they did something stupid, it didn’t implement the way they thought it would. Can you point out to me the malice in this sequence?

“It’s vicious to call out a very powerful commercial organization when it engages in practices that endanger freedom of expression? Ok, anything you say, dude. “

Yeah, I am so crazy for wanting those bullshit fact thingers before making up my mind about stuff. Down with evil corporations! Is that really that different than the black helicopter crowd? Maybe we can start some latte parties after the right wingers are done today with all their tea-bagging? We’ll go to the Puget Sound and dump a bunch of espresso in it and have a funny double entendre slogan.

Fidelito,

So you find something wrong with pointing out that the books that were de-ranked by (I’ll agree) legitimate error also (per The Countess in the earlier thread) just happened to be LGBT and feminist friendly, and wondering why those particular categories were impacted? I ask because that’s all that Amanda is pointing out and exploring here, in a substantive way.

When it comes to public institutions and people who inspire our support and patronage, it’s not really “over-reaction” to point out when they’re operating—even mistakenly—against their stated core values. That’s what makes good institutions better.

So they did something stupid, it didn’t implement the way they thought it would. Can you point out to me the malice in this sequence?

It’s less malice than, as Amanda notes, systemic oppression—casual and pervasive malice, if you will. And yes, an organisation making a public statement that homosexuality or feminism are somehow at odds with “family-friendly” fare—even as the result of a bone-headed error by one employee—is flat-out wrong. That organisation should be called on it, and (from a PR POV) deal with the error swiftly and appropriately.

Down with evil corporations!

Yes, down with corporations that consistently betray (even unintentionally) their stated core values (and down with corps that have crappy core values to begin with). Amazon, I’ll agree, doesn’t do this consistently, and will probably make added efforts to ensure it doesn’t happen again as a result of the uproar and outrage. Without it, though, it would probably behave just like any other bigcorp, and blow things off. Amazon’s PR dept seems to think it can BS and spin its way out of this, but they’re wrong and have damaged their own brand as a result.

Is that really that different than the black helicopter crowd?

The complaints of the black helicopter crowd and the teabaggers are based in utter fantasy, and spurred on by greedheads who stand to benefit from their actions. Amanda’s complaint against Amazon is based in reality backed by empirical evidence (the bulk of the 50k books de-ranked were gay and pro-feminist books).

See the difference?

“It’s less malice than, as Amanda notes, systemic oppression—casual and pervasive malice, if you will. And yes, an organisation making a public statement that homosexuality or feminism are somehow at odds with “family-friendly” fare—even as the result of a bone-headed error by one employee—is flat-out wrong. That organisation should be called on it, and (from a PR POV) deal with the error swiftly and appropriately. “

Do you distinguish between say, a guy who thinks all homosexuals are Satan incarnate and a guy who is a little weirded out about the concept of homosexuality? Pardon the bad example but that’s roughly how I see the difference between active malice and systemic oppression—one is far more active, nasty, and harmful than some confused (and reversible) fuckups.

I don’t see Amazon’s actions as actively malicious and am thus inclined to give them a pass as long as they fix the issue. This likely puts me in the minority on this comments thread and I’m anticipating getting flamed for it.

I’m actually going through some of the “amazonfail” tagged books right now, and one red flag for me is the deranking of Lady Chatterley’s Lover. The only classifiers on that book according to Amazon are:

Literature & Fiction > Classics > General
Literature & Fiction > General > Classics
Romance > General

Unless there is some other, hidden tagging system, I can’t believe any automated system would know to derank this. You’d need the human knowledge that this was a banned book with a history of being known for its sexual content, OR an in-depth analysis of the summary, something that would have taken far too long for Amazon’s computers to do.

No, I absolutely see nothing wrong with bringing up the Amazon story. What I have a problem with is the widespread reaction to the story. The rush to judgment, the refusal to really buy into any possibility other than it was some pogrom against the GLBT community. I certainly take no issue with pointing out any injustices that arise when companies misbehave, obviously it’s one of the most important duties of many bloggers. My comments weren’t a specific indictment of Amanda, I wouldn’t sit here and comment here if I didn’t enjoy a good chunk of the writing. I’m just trying to express my dismay that it is really really hard to find some measured, reasoned blogs that aren’t constantly tearing on ideas, people, and other blogs. This specific issue could have been dealt with and covered with way less vitriol. (Again, I am not talking specifically about Pandagon.) I know that I am not alone in feeling so incredibly worn down by reading all of these great liberal blogs populated by smart writers and readers that are so influenced and diminished by so much negativity. Yeah, I guess I probably sound like a douche-bag, but yesterday’s story was just such a perfect example of how I feel about it. So many sites are doomed to become echo-chambers containing no one but trolls, and a bunch of people who agree on everything. I’m way off topic by now, but that is the direction I really wanted and hoped some of the conversation would go at some point, and the Amazon fail could be a good proxy. As I stated earlier, I certainly don’t believe that we don’t have a huge issue in our society with systematic bigotry of all types. However, I also believe that there is a real need to improve the discourse amongst ourselves, or it could create the stagnation of ideas that has developed on the right. Alright, now that I’ve drifted far enough off topic, I’m going to go shopping @ Amazon. (Just kidding)

Do you distinguish between say, a guy who thinks all homosexuals are Satan incarnate and a guy who is a little weirded out about the concept of homosexuality?

If they’re both discriminating against homosexuals (such as de-ranking their books), out of malice or by casual error, then no, I really don’t.

But let’s accept your difference—is systemic oppression something you find acceptable, or easy to brush off when it makes itself apparent in such a spectacular way—even by accident? Or, to put yourself in the shoes of Amanda (a feminist) or some of our homosexual commenters, would it be acceptable if the systemic oppression was focused on your own race, sexual orientation, age, disability, etc.?

I don’t frame this in terms of “oppression”, but in terms of an outfit with enormous market power flirting with causing real danger to freedom of expression by making it in any way, shape or form possible to disappear books from EVERYBODY’S search results. If and when they implement this ONLY for people who opt INto a safe search, I’ll have no beef with them. But a global system, implemented by an outfit as big and powerful as Amazon, is objectively dangerous regardless of the presence or absence of malice. I’m just floored that so many people have trouble grasping this.

Colin and Fidelito:

I think you need to keep in mind that if you give a fundie half an inch in on any issue, they’ll try to take ten miles. They can’t be given ground.

Weather intentional or not, this incident benefits fundies. Fundies who may decide they like and if/when it’s reversed will likely complain and start agitating to get it back. And while fundies are a minority, they are very loud minority and alot of big corps tend to get suckered into believing that fundie views represent mainstream America.

Reacting swiftly to show Amazon that this is NOT OK will hopefully make it clear to them that most people do not approve of this kinda stuff and that liberals, at least, absolutely <u>will not</u> tolerate it. This is a message Amazon does need to get. And hopefully the speed with which what may very well have been an accident ignited a shitstorm, will make them think twice about ever bowing to any fundie pressure to do it intentionally.

Unless there is some other, hidden tagging system, I can’t believe any automated system would know to derank this. You’d need the human knowledge that this was a banned book with a history of being known for its sexual content, OR an in-depth analysis of the summary, something that would have taken far too long for Amazon’s computers to do.

Given that basing an “adult content” label on raw user-generated tags would be insanely stupid, I’m more and more left with the conclusion that there are hidden Amazon-authoritative metatags attached to each item that mark them as “gay-interest” or “feminist-interest” or “erotica” (amongst other things)—I can see some use in that from a merchandising POV.

How those metatags would be generated are unknown to me, except that a hand-curated system is very unlikely. But since many of the de-ranked items weren’t folksonomically tagged with “gay” or “feminist” (even though they could be associated with those terms), there had to be some basis for such consistency.

Am I the only one who’s amused that the troll thinks he’s in a position to tell me I’m overreacting when he claims that my posts—-where I suggest that this was an accident (albeit one bound to happen due to the system), and state I like Amazon as a rule—-is due to my vendetta against the very existence of corporations.

Goodness, that house you’re standing in is so very, very glassy.  That’s glassy.  No gassy or classy.

What I have a problem with is the widespread reaction to the story.

As with Colin, I’d only ask you to put yourself in the shoes of those who were the object of this systemic oppression. You can understand why it would be upsetting, I hope.

Also, with a couple of exceptions (the site owners not among them), I haven’t seen a lot of degraded discourse and bed-wetting panic on the Amazonfail topic here at Pandagon. Quite the opposite.

Look, amusement aside, I agree that people are quick to assume the worst.  But put yourself in their shoes—-this happens all the time, and it usually is the worst.  In fact, we have a lot of evidence even in Amazon’s spin that this was in fact the worst—-they were implementing a system that we know for a fact dings gays and feminists harder, and doing it in the name of family-friendliness, which is code, most of the time, for patriarchy-friendliness. 

Most people don’t know that Amazon is an unusually liberal company.  They seem like a retailer more than a computer company, and you have to be a real geek about this stuff to know that Amazon is really more part of the West Coast socially liberal computer geek culture than out of the Wal-Mart “family friendly” fuck-the-queers culture that dominates retail.  The few of us that did know were the ones trying to offer that it must have been a hack. 

We were wrong.  Let’s face it.  We were wrong.  It wasn’t a hack.  It was, it turns out, a system that ends up where these systems always do—-trying to squash porn, you get non-pornographic expressions by marginalized people, which stick out more, because they make straight men who run everything nervous.

So I’ve become a Sarah Palin loving, red haired person hating?, corporation loving, homophobic troll? Yeah, my point about needing to calm down is way off base. For the third fucking time, I do not think it was good that this happened. I do not think anyone should have ignored the story. Is it clear? I’m sure, it’s not, so let’s get all the flaming out of everyone’s system so we can drop this thread, how about it?

again fidelito—do you think this would have been FIXED ASAP without the shitstorm?

i don’t.

i believe it needed to be fixed. quickly.

whether or not there was nefarious intent—which i have not commented on—the RESULTS of amazon’s corporate behaviour were damaging to feminists, teens, lgbtqi people and so on. i don’t believe for one single second that amazon would have fixed this mess, and addressed the damage without people screaming blue murder about it.

you don’t like blog controversies? stop reading blogs, or get mad at the stupid-assed behaviour (deliberately bigoted or not) that provokes them.

seriously, amazon pays a lot of folks to defend their corporate reputation—why are you more interested in defending them than in hearing the voices of people who are culturally marginalized and who have been harmed by this?

fidelito—you don’t want to be called a troll? then telling people what they should talk about and/or be upset about is probably not your best option.

But since many of the de-ranked items weren’t folksonomically tagged with “gay” or “feminist” (even though they could be associated with those terms), there had to be some basis for such consistency.

Agreed. Here’s a list of books that were not tagged by Amazon OR users with anything gay, lesbian, transgender, OR sexually-related:

Lady Chatterley’s Lover
The Well of Loneliness
The Beautiful Room is Empty
Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
Full Frontal Feminism
The Dog Pit
Pandora’s Box
Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws
Lord Carabas

There are obviously countless more, but there’s only so much time I can waste at work today.  Perhaps if the same author was tagged with gay/lesbian issues for another work, the deranking affected everything by that author? I can’t see how that’s fair or sane, but if this IS a computer error, then computational linguistic analysis has come a long way since oh, April 11th. Or there are meta-tags that Amazon is using to categorize books without user knowledge, which is not unlikely, but also makes me extremely uncomfortable. (“Sure, the publisher says this book is about dog fighting, but it’s actually about beastiality, we think”).

There was no rush to judgment.  There was a rush to demand answers, which are still very incomplete.  These days the independent bookstores are on the ropes, and even the chains are having big problems. Amazon books has become a market maker for books, even though I doubt it qualifies as monopoly, and my dollars helped put them there.  If I am not satisfied about the social implications of spending my dollars there, then there is no reason for me to do so. 

I would like to continue to feel okay about spending money at Amazon:  we have a Kindle, for gosh’s sakes.

Yeah, it really comes off as oh hey, fidelito, you disagree with us? Fuck you then. I’m not trying to tell people what to talk about at all, I’m trying to have a civil conversation. In fact, trying to find a blog where one can be had. This obviously, isn’t one of them for me. So Sophie, I certainly will take your advice and mosey along.

Yeah, my point about needing to calm down is way off base.

It was in this context, so yeah, it smacked of concern trolling. If you’re so dedicated to civil discourse in the blogosphere, you might want to re-read your first post in this thread and consider how well you live up to your own standards.

I’m trying to have a civil conversation.

really? by telling us all to stop talking about this? i do not think that this word “conversation” means what you think it does.

see ya.

Are we going to start throwing around the omnipotent THEY?

I don’t see anyone doing that here.  “They” as used thus far in this comment thread, would seem to apply to:

1.  Amazon.com, the company which made the mistake in question.  Also subsidiaries of Amazon, staff members, decision makers, and others which often come under the heading of “Amazon”.

2.  American conservatives and/or Evangelical Christians, who seem to be the driving force behind the policy change.

3.  The wider mainstream American society which surrounds all of us commenting here, as well as including both Amazon.com and American conservatives and/or Evangelical Christians.

All of this seems perfectly above-board as far as the Grammar Nazi in me is concerned.

further to amanda’s post, the thing that i really don’t get is why some parents are so very concerned/panicked about their child hearing about homosexuality, or seeing naked people or whatever, and yet are so very blase about the casual violence that their children are exposed to on a constant basis. but violence is mainstream…

Wow, overreact much, fidelito?  I never said you love Sarah Palin, but you are in fact quick to accuse others of only being motivated by hostility to corporations, because you are deeply invested in this narrative about how Amazon was a victim of hysterics.

Perhaps you will be less easy to make fun of if you quit being hysterical about the supposed hysterics of others.

“But let’s accept your difference—is systemic oppression something you find acceptable, or easy to brush off when it makes itself apparent in such a spectacular way—even by accident? Or, to put yourself in the shoes of Amanda (a feminist) or some of our homosexual commenters, would it be acceptable if the systemic oppression was focused on your own race, sexual orientation, age, disability, etc.? “

What I was trying to get at (poorly) is that Amazon is not a set-in-stone ideological organization like, say, a white power dude or the klan or something. Systemic oppression is not something I find acceptable, but participants in said systemic oppression often can have their opinions altered when someone helps them examine these opinions—it’s not like you are born into the world with an understanding of alienation and power structures, and I think that a little gentle discussion goes a long way in helping people see your point. I think Amazon as an organization would have been sympathetic to that, because I don’t really see anything in this whole fiasco that indicates that they have some ideological opposition to this stuff. (The words “I think” appear a lot in this post, but this is pretty much where I’m coming from.)

“Wow, overreact much, fidelito?  I never said you love Sarah Palin, but you are in fact quick to accuse others of only being motivated by hostility to corporations, because you are deeply invested in this narrative about how Amazon was a victim of hysterics.

Perhaps you will be less easy to make fun of if you quit being hysterical about the supposed hysterics of others. “

In his defense, someone did compare him/her to Sarah Palin and call him/her a tea party lover for airing a contrary opinion pretty much right off the bat. I think s/he went a bit overboard but if someone said I was Sarah Palin for airing a slightly dissenting opinion I’d be a little irked too.

I think that a little gentle discussion goes a long way in helping people see your point.

i understand your point, but i am unclear on how one goes about having a “little gentle discussion” with a large corporate entity like amazon. and when something bad is going down (intentional or not!), that is not the time for “gentle discussion”—that is a time to say loudly and clearly, “this is not acceptable.” we can talk about the why and the how once the immediate problem has been addressed.

also, i don’t really think that fidelito “aired a contrary opinion”—he just called us (and particularly amanda) names for daring to raise a stink about this, and daring to be distrustful of amazon’s motives. that’s not an opinion, that’s trolling.

participants in said systemic oppression often can have their opinions altered when someone helps them examine these opinions

Hence the usefulness of the liberal blogosphere response that fidelito finds so overblown—we’re not talking about convincing an individual, we’re talking about convincing a huge corporate entity. Most of those complaining about Amazon’s fail, myself and Amanda included, like and support the company, and want to make it clear to them that certain of their business practises are leading them down a very bad path. No-one is demanding they go against their core values (quite the opposite), and the basis of the complaint is rooted in something other than fantasy. Had there been no outraged response pointing our the systemic oppression, Amazon would have shrugged this off as just another embarrassing technical “glitch.”

And yeah, it gets wild and wooly on the Internet, but Amazon is an Internet-based company—when they don’t handle an digital attack on their brand as well as a bricks-and-mortar company like Domino’s Pizza, you’re going to see people taking them to task for that, too.

Anyhow, you seem to get the point, so no need to belabour it.

I take a wait and see attitude. Object loudly, then see if things change. Perhaps there is a middle manager or coder at amazon.com that needs to be fired for thinking he can get away with fulfilling his fundamentalist need to shame everyone else in the world. Perhaps amazon.com was hacked. Perhaps some genius decided that fundies buy more books per capita than atheists/agnostics, liberal to mainstream Protestants and Catholics, Jews, LGBT people, and feminists combined. Not likely, given the content of what pass as “Christian bookstores” in suburbia. (Hint: the local Episcopal diocesan bookstore has about 4 times the total book stock, and 100 times the “serious” non-Bible book stock, as the typical fundamentalist / conservative “Christian bookstore” with 6 to 8 times the floor space.)

Finally there’s an explanation for this whole mess that starts to make some sense: http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archives/166384.asp

Finally there’s an explanation for this whole mess that starts to make some sense:

Read that article yesterday. A few comments:

Sev-1 is reserved for the most critical operational issues and often are sent up the management chain to the senior vice president level

Oooh, all the way to the senior vice president level (at a company of 20k people) for a critical systemwide operational issue. No wonder the response was filled with fail.

Amazon.com employees are on call 24/7, and many began working on the problem from home. It didn’t take much digging to realize that there was a data error.

Amazon tech employees, to be precise. The PR staff and executive management apparently had chocolate bunnies that needed eating and summer houses that needed opening.

Amazon managers found that an employee who happened to work in France had filled out a field incorrectly and more than 50,000 items got flipped over to be flagged as “adult,” the source said. (Technically, the flag for adult content was flipped from ‘false’ to ‘true.’)

To be precise, the flag for adult content for any item containing certain metadata indicating it was LGBT-related or feminist-related got flipped. I doubt this code-monkey in France went through 50k items manually.

“It’s no big policy change, just some field that’s been around forever filled out incorrectly,” the source said.

People who’ve worked with DBs will instantly recognise this as a “reserved” (for future use) field. The future use seems to have been batch switching all items with certain metadata to “adult content.” The only question is, was the field named “reserved” or “is_adult” (with text datatypes) or something like “gay_is_adult” and “feminist_is_adult” (with booleans)?

Amazon employees worked on the problem well past midnight, and then handed it over to an international team, he said.

So the batch process actually updated each DB record, rather than changing a business logic rule. No wonder they’re remediating 50k items by hand across several time zones.

“Most everyone at one point who works with catalog systems has broken some piece of the catalog,” the source said.

Fair enough, and thus easily anticipated. Which is why it’s a good idea to have trusted fire-control teams (including people above SVP level) in place when one of those predictable incidents inevitably has truly serious consequences.

An Amazon spokesman was not immediately available for comment.

... to a story that broke over 12 hours ago. The Amazon PR department continues its winning streak. The results:

Previous posts:
Amazon under fire for perceived anti-gay policy
Amazon.com tells Gay & Lesbian Alliance it will fix ‘error’
Was Amazon the victim of a homophobic hack attack? Unclear
For sale on eBay: AmazonFail.com
Amazon calls mistake ‘embarrassing and ham-fisted’

Way to manage a brand crisis, guys!

I certainly don’t believe that we don’t have a huge issue in our society with systematic bigotry of all types.

Well, I’m going out on a limb here and gonna say you aren’t female or gay.  You’re probably rather melanin deprived as well.

Unless you are a member of an oppressed group, or have been made aware of the conditions faced by a member of an oppressed group, you really don’t understand.  It’s not okay that feminist and homosexual books were labelled adult while porn and cure-the-gayz books were left around for the kiddies to peruse.  The thought process behind that categorization is fucked up.

No one single person caused this problem, and that’s part of the problem.  No one objected to labelling “Hannah Has Two Mommies” as adult material.  Yet Playboy was given a pass.

That’s fucked up.