Amazon Fail: Another Update

[filkertom]

Interesting stuff. No public statement yet from Amazon, and they really could use one. One guy claims responsibility. Another guy calls bullshit.

Much more important, I have received a message from someone who works for Amazon (who wants to remain anonymous), saying on good authority that it really actually was a glitch. Somebody did something stupid, and the problem is that the sheer scale of what happened means it will take awhile to sort out. But they are on it.

I don't know any of this for sure myself (although I'm inclined to believe the Amazon employee); we'll see what goes on. However, I did have to tell you guys about one thing. Last night, I was speaking with sazettel, who suggested a possible way of affecting Amazon directly if it did turn out to be their fault and deliberate: Everyone who has one return their Kindle.

At which point I started laughing like a loon, and created these:


I probably should get the domain putthekindleback.com or something, but I don't care all that much. And, who knows, they may fix everything up this afternoon. But I at least wanted to share the joke. If you use 'em, please credit me and tomsmithonline.com.

ETA: the info from the Amazon employee.

Comments

[scifantasy.livejournal.com]

Hee! Nice one.

[stormsdotter.livejournal.com]

I looked at the cost of a Kindle. I've decided I'd rather buy a One Laptop Per Child from eBay, so I can write on public transportation without worrying about dropping/spilling coffee on my expensive laptop. It works as an eBook reader, took.

Also, thank you for making me smile.

[pandoradeloeste.livejournal.com]

OLPC wins so hard. I did a project on them for an econ class. I love the idea of a handcrank-powered laptop.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

About the only good thing about the Kindle is the free internet connection for life!

[zibblsnrt.livejournal.com]

Well, unless you're a Canadian.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

or anywhere in the world other than America.

[palenoue.livejournal.com]

I have an OLPC from their first "Buy One, Give One" program. Very rugged, very portable. Highly recommend it for that. Unfortunately the native user interface is awkward, you can tell it was created by someone who lives and breaths command line interface and only _thinks_ he understands what GUI means. If you get one plan on installing another flavor of Linux.

[alverant.livejournal.com]

I am glad it's looking more and more like either 1) it was a glitch or 2) it was a single employee who will get a nice PINK slip in the near future.

Looking back, I wonder how many people will think they over-reacted, a little too quick to delete their accounts. It's easy to say "I won't shop there until this is fixed" because you can go back once it is fixed. But deleting your account is burning your bridges behind you.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I'm inclined to agree -- I wrote them a very sharp note saying I wouldn't be back till the problem was fixed and they had issued a public apology, and I intend to keep it, but if they do these things I will go back, and I'll make an equal point of letting them know I did and why. They need to know that there's reason to bother cleaning up their messes.

[mamadeb.livejournal.com]

I just saw this (http://www.feministing.com/archives/014797.html), but I'd need some confirmation.

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

I don't get it...

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

In the movie the photos are from, the line is "put..the candle...back"

[shockwave77598.livejournal.com]

ah, okay.

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Here, this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgFE0Gg3g-w)'ll help. :) Never saw Young Frankenstein, huh? I envy you. Great, great flick.

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

Somebody did something stupid, all righty. However... A "glitch" would be a computer error, this was deliberate. How could it not be? The "blacklisted" books were carefully chosen on account of content.

The roots of Proposition H8 run deeply.

[jenk]

The "blacklisted" books were carefully chosen on account of content.

Off the top of my head?

Badly-coded search algorithim. See also Yahoo groups trying to stop "adult" discussion by banning words like "breast", without thinking of breast cancer, breast feeding, and so on.

A list of "adult" books purchased from a vendor which claimed to be assembled according to one set of standards but was actually assembled according to another. The last software test conference I went to had a hilarious set of examples from the Google Maps group on how they've learned to QA the data they import for Maps. If an import suddenly doubles the number of airports, for example, it probably means they weren't picked up as duplicates. Or the bus stop that appeared in the middle of Antarctica, no where near a road... ;)

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

"Brokeback Mountain" is banned, but "Can Homosexuality be Healed?" isn't? Which one has the no-no topic in the title? I find this "glitch" theory mighty suspicious.

[jenk]

Depends on what they're searching - description, title, etc. Note also "Essential Dykes To Watch Out For" retains its rank of #1 in Lesbian Studies.

That said, I'm leaning more toward a misrepresented list myself.

ETA: Also interesting that the "Women En Large" book of fat nudes is not ranked but Leonard Nimoy’s much more recent book of fat nudes is ranked.

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

So, basically it's the ones they have heard of. Books with some notoriety and recognition value. If I were Misty Lackey, I'd be a bit miffed about now. ;-)

[kshandra]

Note also "Essential Dykes To Watch Out For" retains its rank of #1 in Lesbian Studies.

...but Fun Home had its rank removed. (It's back, now, and I'm sorry I didn't think to check the rest of Alison Bechdel's titles when I saw that it had been added to the list at meta_writer.)

[jenk]

Interesting - Fun Home was one of the first I checked yesterday, and it had its rank then. (Of course when a site is in flux, it's in flux... ;)

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

"Dear Author" has a post up showing how it might indeed be a fubar'd search algoritm using Amazon metadata tags which are inconsistently applied.

I spent 20 years as a computer programmer. Believe me, it's not necessary to impute malice even to something like this when there are so many ways for inconsistency, incompetence, and the "it's not working the way you think it's working" bug to combine to create the same results.

None of which is to say that the effect isn't bad, and I'm not happy that Amazon is still stonewalling about the fact that it happened at all. "We messed something up, and we're working as fast as we can to fix it without making matters even worse" would have gone a long way.

[jenk]

Indeed - on all your points :)

[mimiheart.livejournal.com]

Watch me play devil's advocate...

For whatever reason, the coding that was previously in place was causing things like Brokeback Mountain to come up as suggested if you liked Harry Potter. No big deal, but we must think of the innocent children buying Harry Potter with Daddy's credit card unsupervised, so let's put in a script that will prevent certain types of things from being cross-referenced when suggesting other titles one might enjoy. Kind of makes sense *cough* if you're homophobic *cough*... especially if you don't really know what's inside the other books...

Except something goes wrong with this bit of programming, human error or something of that matter. Instead of just preventing it from cross-referencing on the "suggested" section, it stops you from searching for it altogether *AND* removes the ratings. A bit much.

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

"For whatever reason, the coding that was previously in place was causing things like Brokeback Mountain to come up as suggested if you liked Harry Potter. "

I've never figured that one out. Pretty funny though... unless you actually have to explain to your ten year old that NO, you're not going to buy him Brokeback Mountain.

[mimiheart.livejournal.com]

Probably because of the adults who like slash. A simpler solution would be for parents to parent. *gasp*

[selenesue.livejournal.com]

Yesss.

Also, checking the F/SF genre: I took a look at the pages on Mercedes Lackey's "The Last Herald Mage" trilogy, whose protagonist is openly gay, and those still appear to have their stars. Things that make you say Hmmm.

[mimiheart.livejournal.com]

Ah, Vanyel's angst... I don't think I could handle it right now.

From what I've been able to see, it has to do with what the publisher's put in their data about the books. Heather Has Two Mommies was pulled, but Emma and Meesha My Boy: A Two Mom Story wasn't.

[jenrose]

They ALL have their stars. It's the line below that, rankings, that's disappeared.

[hiddenriver.livejournal.com]

Good point - that's the only 'glitch' possibility so far that strikes me as a reasonable possibility. I absolutely do not buy a simple "keyword" problem here - there was clearly (very poor) human judgment at work somewhere in this mess.

The confirmation of an actual policy change that some authors received a while back makes it very, very difficult to believe that Amazon is entirely innocent in this matter.

[darthparadox.livejournal.com]

You're assuming that there's no possible way a glitch can affect a certain category of books while leaving the rest alone. Also, do you have a complete list of the books affected? If not, I don't see how your "carefully chosen" claim can stand up.

Finally, Proposition 8 was a deliberate denial of fundamental rights to a class of people. This is an inadvertent removal of books from a certain set of search results - they still showed up on others, and they still were present on the Amazon site. Linking the two is ridiculous.

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

*dies* Those are great.

I've chronicled what's been going on with my stuff, but I haven't made any rash statements or deleted anything.

I have a Sony 505. I don't like proprietary devices, formats and DRM.

[siliconshaman.livejournal.com]

Reading some of the backend stuff on the amazon's developers forums, their metatags database is very, very broken.

Add possible troll to that, or cack-handed employee, and you get a clusterfuck of this order.

[peachtales.livejournal.com]

The pics are cute :D

In a very loosely related issue, I just found out that my hometown of Zurich in Switzerland (in this case, the city where I grew up, rather than the city of San Francisco, where I was born) will have it's first lesbian City President (aka Mayor) starting May 4. Her name is Corine Mauch. Nifty.

[saganth.livejournal.com]

A riot iss an ugly ting, unt, I tink that it iss just about time dat ve had von!

[warinbear.livejournal.com]

Shouldn't that be "chust about time"? <g>

[filkertom.livejournal.com]

Inspector Kemp (http://www.sedhe.net/amusements/kemp.html): The ur-Jäger.

[saganth.livejournal.com]

BWAHAHAHAHAH!!!

[batyatoon]

*SHRIEKS WITH LAUGHTER*

[thatcrazycajun.livejournal.com]

boogiebabe_smap has suggested the possibility that Amazon may have simply gotten hacked from outside. I hadn't thought of this, but if the anti-gay/fundie bastards are now recruiting black-hat hackers (or, incredibly, learning how to code themselves) to sabotage any site that sells even remotely LGBTQ-positive material, they are now way more dangerous than anyone ever expected them to get.

[hsifyppah.livejournal.com]

Bwahahaha, I love you.