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Over the weekend, much of the GLBT community sent itself into hysterics after Amazon seemingly removed sales rankings from a large amount of LGBT books for deemed "adult" in content. That is to say, books like James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain, The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students, and feminist/general sexuality were considered too hot for Amazon viewers' eyes.
The groundswell of anger resulted in a Twitter pitchfork rally (with the hash tag "#amazonfail" that snowballed over the weekend. Also, author/activist Davina Kotulski, Ph.D., who could probably use a Xanax right about now, sent out this message.
Dear Friends,My heart is beating so fast as I share this extremely upsetting news with you. Amazon just stripped the sales ranking indicators for all books with anything that has to do with gay content and they are calling it "adult" material. On 1/3/09 the last time I checked my Amazon book ranking it was 91,602. I was horrified when I received an e-mail today telling me about Amazon's new policy and went to the site myself and found my rank missing. I searched other books like Eckhart Tolle's The New Earth and a new favorite The Michaelangelo Method which ranks at #366,419 in Books still have their ranking. Evan Wolfson's Why Marriage Matters has lost his ranking, but Focus on the Family's Glen Stanton's anti-gay Why Marriage Matters book has a rank.
Friends, I am sorry, but my hands are shaking and I am burning in my stomach acids at this RAW INJUSTICE. I'm asking you to boycott Amazon.com until they rectify this egregious act. And please share this with everyone. We cannot allow gay people to be treated this way.
Thank you,
Davina
If the above rant is any indicator, we can only imagine how much fun her book Why You Should Give A Damn About Gay Marriage! is to read.
Anyway, on Sunday night, according to Publisher's Weekly, "an Amazon spokesperson said that a 'glitch' had occurred in its sales ranking feature that was in the process of being fixed."
But, if we may play's devil's advocate for a moment, why was the "how to stop being gay" cannon on Amazon left untouched. That seems a bit fishy. The "glitch" seems like it might have required at least SOME human intervention, right? Perhaps it was the work of some rogue employee hopped up on Easter weekend's Christian fervor?
But let's give amazon the benefit of the doubt -- the company has no reason to hide merchandise from its customers, and it's never done anything anti-gay before. Maybe a discount on the affected titles will help smooth things over with customers.
Update: It seems the French are to blame. Of course. According to a the Slog, an insider has the word about what went down.
[T]he story is that a programmer at Amazon France was editing the site to filter porn out of some search results, and he "mixed up 'adult,' which is the term they use for porn, with stuff like 'erotic' and 'sexuality.' The system he was working on is universal, so the change he made propagated across Amazon's sites worldwide.
Then again, this could also be the handy work of "anti-gay trolls." Or "online miscreant" Weev. Gulp.
We'll continue to update with rampant speculation and presumption.
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The "Christian Army" strikes? Guess I'll be avoiding Amazon.com for a little while until there's some clarity about what happened ... add them to my list that includes the state of Utah, Cinemark theatres (over at Westfield), and some other this and that which promoted Prop 8's passage last year.
The internet sucks.
Twitter sure is great for spreading panic.
Amazon's homophobia here is obvious and certainly shouldn't be dismissed, but I think this also raises some real concerns about the future of digital publishing and censorship: Making Books Disappear
The question that I didn't hear in all this internet hysteria is "why"? Why would Amazon do this? What do they stand to gain in this day and age? I mean, I was in a rural Illinois Borders this year (don't ask) and even they had a GLBT section...right in the open and everything, gasp!!!
Did Jeff Bezos suddenly turn Donald Wildmon? Possible, I suppose, but not entirely probable.
Occam's Razor says it was indeed a glitch or perhaps some rogue human intervention but not a policy decision by Amazon. Who knows though--let's get our pitchforks and torches in the meantime!!!
Yes indeed, I too was thinking "oh this is silly, Amazon the company would never do this on purpose." And I still believe that the company wasn't responsible, but it kind of looks like some rogue employee might've had a hand in it.
The thing that changed my mind is how all of the "ex-gay" books suddenly up at the top of the rankings now.
Brock there is a bit more to it - that makes it seem intentional - if this is true:
When pressed for a reason, Amazon.com’s customer service department told YA author Mark Probst:
In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.
Hence the attempt to googlebomb "amazon rank" to mean an arbitrary or capricious decision.
What kind of person bought books based on Amazon rank anyway?
That won't change.
Yeah sure that may be true, but only LGBT books were moved and not anti-books, or hetro books that were also 'adult'. This is a question of parsing, and the parsing appears (key word) to have been targeted at sub-demographic of books.
Serious question: do you honestly believe that it was a policy decision by Amazon? Nothing about it makes sense.
I do think it was a policy decision. And why not? I think if they want to segregate lists, that's a fine decision, as long as it is not as narrowly tailored as this one seems to be.
Therefore, I don't think they were being intentionally homophobic, per se, but I do think they were trying to keep certain titles from popping up on that list or whatever. Which is their right, and I no problem with that.
I think it makes sense to have all kinds of lists. For easier searching.
Well, I mean, as it stands now, they were giving recommendations based on authors and keywords much less specific than "adult." Someone ordering, say, a Robert Schuller book was unlikely to be recommended Brokeback Mountain before. And given how relatively savvy Amazon has been in the past, something about this just doesn't add up.
At any rate, I guess my main point was that it might pay to wait and see just what happened and why before working oneself into a frenzied maelstrom like the internet did this weekend.
well I'm certainly not upset - either way it makes little to no difference to me personally - and I too will wait and see what the true(?) outcome is. If it turns out that the customer service response posted on the internet is less than whole story, great! if it is indicative of something else, fine. My walls will not tumble down.
Yeah, I hear you.
It always kind of surprises me (well, maybe "interests" is a better word) what will--and what doesn't--burn up the internet.
Are you people stupid? , you actually think AMAZON did this on purpose? Get a life
Ok, we'll shut up. We'll go back to our usual business. We'll get a life. There is no discrimination or cause for alarm, everyone is equal. Keep your eyes forward. The computers did it.
Actually, while I don't necessarily agree with spysea's tone, it's appearing more and more likely that the computers did do it.
...don't think the French are to blame...any nation that can screen 'kingdom of the senses' on prime time tv isn't about to censer anything!...doesn't take much to start a 'rage wave' does it?????!...