Amazon Fail: An Update

[filkertom]

mimiheart points us to a very good summary of all that's happened, including a list of books that have had their sales rankings removed and a dissection of the "glitch" theory.

On the other side of the foofrah, hughcasey and siliconshaman refer to the trolling theory known as Bantown. Which has its merits, but some folks in the comments of that thread point out that Amazon has apparently been doing this since February.

Let's see what happens today, folks.

Comments

[jss]

On "Marketplace" (on NPR produced by APM) this morning, the last 15-seconds were "Oh yeah, Amazon said it's a glitch."

Glitch my ass. Those asshats tried something sneaky and got caught red-handed. I expect a lot more than "oops" if they want my business back.

(Written before seeing the #glitchmyass tweet-tag.)

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Hee. The author of the last post I link to, above, said, "Glitch, please."

[cheshyre]

Combining some of the theories, Amazon may have had a policy to hide adult material, intended to be narrowly applied. Thus, the CustSat people were following their assigned script when they gave that information. But trolls found a glitch allowing them to exploit this policy, expanding it to cover materials outside the intended purview of policy.

I suppose we'll have to wait until business hours today to find out more.

[saganth.livejournal.com]

I signed the petition condemning their actions, and I think they are indeed asshats for doing it and I hope they undo it... but even if they don't, I must be honest and confess I can't bring myself to cut off all business contact with them. Amazon is still my chief resource for books, particularly copies of out of print ones sold by third-parties used, at cheap prices. I still need them as a go-between, sadly. However, I will gladly minimize my purchases from Amazon directly - easily done, I almost never buy directly from them anyways. 99% of the time I buy used books from other sellers via Amazon.

[bayushisan.livejournal.com]

Try Powells.com for out of print books. I've gotten an out of print boxed set, City of Lies by AEG, and a couple of the old Clan books from the L5R rpg. I've had very good dealings with them and out of print things seem to be a strong point of theirs.

[bryanp.livejournal.com]

This is just pathetic. It's further annoying since just last month I gave them a big pile of money for toys. *sigh*

[alverant.livejournal.com]

Amazon has a lot of employees. I wonder if this is the work of several of them acting in secret and the company itself is trying to hide the fact to CYA. A classic "right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing" senerio.

Also has anyone checked to see if other controversial books that would offend the same kind of people as homosexuality (ie evolution, Islam, Atheism, liberalism, etc) has had their ranking removed?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Books on feminism have apparently had their rank removed.

[mimiheart.livejournal.com]

Feminism is code for lesbianism, donchaknow... Rush Limbaugh told me.

[rmeidaking.livejournal.com]

S works for a company that assists Amazon with security issues. He's anticipating a long day, as they work out what happened, and how to stop it in the future.

I suggest going to Amazon an giving a 5-star review to any book you feel is being affected by this.

As of 9 am, searching for 'lesbian' on Amazon returns normal results, rather that the, um, interesting results that were available over the weekend. I think we'll find out that this was a targeted attack, and the work of a few mis-guided individuals inside Amazon.

[the-blue-fenix.livejournal.com]

Same result here, same search term "lesbian."

[aylinn.livejournal.com]

ah, but as of 9:39 edt, "homosexuality" still shows the erroneous results.

and as for the idea of whether or not it was a "Bantown" scenario being not possible because it's been happening since February?

Two words - Test Run. whoever did it tested it then and when it succeeded, began scaling the campaign for Easter. That would be my guess.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

Two words - Test Run.

Oh, good. I'm not the only one to think of this.

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

I suggest going to Amazon an giving a 5-star review to any book you feel is being affected by this.

Meh, I do kind of think boosting a book I might know nothing about is in the same realm of dishonesty as flagging it as 'adult' to get it out of search results.

There's enough of a problem with books on Amazon being largely rated unread for political reasons as it stands.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Something is fishy in Denmark. Or the US, to be more precise. At the same time Amazon.com is going through convulsions to seperate its "adult" sales from the rest of its merchandise, so too is Second Life forcing all its users who have "adult businesses" to a newly formed and newly classified landmass called Ursula. That two companies like this are injuring themselves in the effort to segregate their merchandise makes me wonder if some legal beagle stuff from the Feds that we aren't aware of is responsible. Moreso because the SL move is being done even though there are simpler and cheaper ways to "improve the company's image" without p***ing off so many of their customers like they are currently doing. That Amazon is doing the same bonehead move at the same bonehead time, makes me believe that there's a bonehead in common that's driving them both into doing this. And no doubt, there are lots more stories like this going to appear shortly.

Sounds like someone up high is trying to Disneyfy the Internet as a whole. Maybe I'd better start up that server farm business in the Cayman Islands to protect the American Freedoms we treasure...

[admnaismith.livejournal.com]

I now suspect trolls outside the company.

metafrantic posted a plausible explanation how one asshat (or more probably, a large group of asshats in concert) might have intentionally flag-bombed a bunch of books, causing Amazon's software to automatically suspend sales ranking until someone in the company could investigate personally. And they did it on Easter when most employees probably had the day off.

http://metafrantic.livejournal.com/131343.html

It would make sense for a company like Amazon to have a feature that automatically goes off after a certain number of customer complaints. And it makes sense that certain consortiums of asshats, the ones who try to organize mass boycotts of Disney and McDonalds for doing something gay-friendly, would exploit such a thing.

Amazon has enough goodwill with me that I'm willing to step back and watch for more evidence before throwing rocks, anyhow.

[emiofbrie.livejournal.com]

http://community.livejournal.com/brutal_honesty/3168992.html

[sophia9847.livejournal.com]

This is SO out of character for amazon, and in general they have been a great source of...shall we say, more *niche* items that have hard to purchase in this part of the country till relatively recently. While I think the glitch theory is BS (and hope that PR schmuck gets canned), I do suspect that this was the work of a small group of fundies or disgruntled (ex?)employees internally or externally exploiting known weaknesses in the System. I'm trying to recall--has Amazon announced any mass layoffs lately? something like this would be a great way to give them a PR black eye, if one was so inclined. While I'm putting a planned purchase on hold until this gets resolved, I'm taking a wait and see approach. they're my favorite online retailer, bar none, and they've earned the benefit of at least a few doubts.

[bryanp.livejournal.com]

While I think the glitch theory is BS (and hope that PR schmuck gets canned)

If, as some have suggested, this was outsiders abusing a poorly implemented "feature" of Amazon's system, then you could sort of define it as a glitch. You know, in a "what is the definition of is" way.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

The story just got a lot more coverage. I found a link on cnn.com about it going to CNET http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10217715-93.html?tag=newsLatestHeadlinesArea.0 (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10217715-93.html?tag=newsLatestHeadlinesArea.0). Some of the comments are a little disturbing, but most have been in our favor. Hopefully this means they'll fix it soon rather than go through the negative PR.

[msgeek.livejournal.com]

The only thing I get from Amazon at the moment are free MP3 downloads. I was pondering actually buying a few from them, but now that iTunes removed FairPlay DRM from music I don't need to anymore. Bai bai Amazon. It's half.ebay.com, powells.com and barnesandnoble.com for me now.

[saganth.livejournal.com]

I'm not entirely sure I get the whole Bantown thing. Even after reading tehdely's article about this, I'm a little lost. Is all this supposedly saying that some outside group pushed Amazon into the hasty policy change just to create trouble?

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

That's exactly what it's saying, yeah.

There's some pretty sizable communities of people on the net who kick over anthills purely for watching the problems that result from it; it's where you get stuff like those wastes of oxygen who run sites like Encyclopedia Dramatica.