UPDATE: Amazon "Glitch" Causes Uproar Among the Gays
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.