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

[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.