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Tuesday 14th April 2009
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Join Date: Mar 2009
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You May Not Want To Buy Books/Movies/Films From Amazon...
This news in my lap this mornin...
bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2009/04/the_amazon_firestorm.html
(I usually can't be bothered with sifting through blogs but this is actually linked from the main BBC News front page under "Features, Views, Analysis")
Quote:
2. At 09:09am on 14 Apr 2009, BenPanced wrote:
The email you received was a canned response that anybody gets when they send a question on the situation.
The fact of the matter is Amazon has made no official response. There's nothing on their front page, nothing in their onsite blog, nothing in the mainstream media. The silence is damning and every hour they don't respond just gets them in deeper.
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6. At 09:40am on 14 Apr 2009, Ikarus wrote:
Blue_Blood1 is dead wrong.
Amazon is the closest thing there is to a monopoly in book sales. As such, it becomes more than a private company, and gains a responsibility to respect freedom of speech. A bookseller (or library) who is willing to censor its stock in any way is committing a fundamental betrayal of their purpose. One would expect that from a "Christian Bookshop" next to a church (one reason why I would never willingly enter such an establishment), but not from a global online retailer. I could have sworn Amazon used "banned books week" as promotional tool for some books, rendering the current scandal all the more hypocritical.
Amazon taking steps to censor books in the US is similarly abhorrent to Google censoring searches in China. Google, at least, has the excuse of adhering to local laws. What excuse does Amazon have? "It was just an 'error' that we would never have corrected if people hadn't kicked up a fuss"?
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9. At 10:27am on 14 Apr 2009, DKAlbion wrote:
firebird2100 seems to be unaware that Waterstones is actually owned by Amazon. It used to be be an excellent book store, but since it's takeover has merely become an Amazon clone and offers this reader at least no alternative choice at all.
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Quote:
11. At 10:28am on 14 Apr 2009, DougieLawson wrote:
Google has safesearch (with three choices) which I have set to "Do not filter my search results". Folks who are overly sensitive can remove results that they dislike or disapprove of based on Google's hidden filter definitions.
Amazon should introduce an equivalent profile switch. I don't want any search on any website censored if the censorship isn't in my control.
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17. At 11:18am on 14 Apr 2009, U3316594 wrote:
The answer to Blue_blood1 and other closet homophobes here is this: would it worry you if a major bookseller said it would not sell books by Jews? No. So, why is it OK to ban books by gays and lesbians?
The conflation of 'gay' with 'harmful to children' is totally unacceptable today, as shown by the appliciation to Gide, EM Foster and other great novelists.
If Amazon wants to ban 'harmful' books what about all the hetero porn for that matter, books gloriyfing war and violence?
If Amazon really wants to become the Mary Whitehouse of the internet, its going to lose a lot of custom, which will not be made up by blue_blood1 and others pleased that only 'clean' literature is for sale.
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21. At 11:33am on 14 Apr 2009, alli_y wrote:
Amazon has much more of a Monopoly than people realise. Many book stores, Waterstones included, get their stock from Amazon rather than directly from publishers in addition to public and private school libraries. As a consequence, not being able to view any book on searches and bestseller lists seriously damages that book's publicity, it simply won't be noticed and therefore not bought. And private company or not, being so large means that Amazon is very much in the public eye. Anything that remotely resembles censorship, whether it actually was or not, is going to cause uproar as a natural consequence.
I should also point out that is wasn't just books dealing with homosexuality that where removed. There were books dealing with sexuality of disabled individuals and a book written to dissuade teenagers from committing suicide, amongst others.
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More:
jezebel.com/5209088/why-is-amazon-removing-the-sales-rankings-from-gay-lesbian-books
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23amazonfail
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23GLITCHMYASS
Why burn books/films when you can hide their very existence from people not knowing their searches are secretly being "cut"...
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Tuesday 14th April 2009
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Administrator
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Posts: 30
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This actually made me finally sign up for twitter lol, lurk killer...
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Tuesday 14th April 2009
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Administrator
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Posts: 30
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Tuesday 14th April 2009
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Administrator
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Posts: 30
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HAHA love this tweet
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realSuaine: #amazonfail the ham-fisted auto-email reads like "this story sucks, read and review anyway, I luv U!" Amazon = Mary Sue fan writer?
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Tuesday 14th April 2009
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Administrator
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Posts: 30
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Tuesday 14th April 2009
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Administrator
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Posts: 30
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Another Amazon representative response to an author: http://www.feministing.com/archives/014797.html ( archived version)
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Last night, after finding out about the Amazon craziness, I immediately called my editor, Brooke Warner, over at Seal Press. (Especially because Full Frontal Feminism and Yes Means Yes were two of the books affected.)
She spoke to their Amazon rep today, and he told her it was definitely not a glitch. From Brooke's email to me:
Basically he said that amazon has been experimenting with the way they dole out content specifically so that people who are searching Harry Potter or whatever won't run into links to products that might be offensive.
...It's super fucked up, but apparently he's saying that Amazon is a bully when it comes to stuff like this and it's all about sales for them and it's not about censorship. [He said t]hat they love you, love Seal, but that this is mandated from their bosses, who essentially want to be Walmart.
...He also said no human is responsible for the decisions per se, and that it's all about tagging and feeds which are constantly being tweaked. He does think that amazon will retweak the tags based on the uproar that happened over the weekend.
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The new "glitch" explanation is just PR propaganda, this second Amazon representative reply really hits the nail in the coffin of that lie.
feministing.com/archives/014791.html
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we do know one thing; there is anti-queer, ant-feminist motivation behind this and Amazon has got to step the fuck up. Craig Seymor even pointed out the problem to them in February and it's only now, when folks are up in arms, that they're taking action on this. Not okay.
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deannazandt.com/2009/04/14/amazonfail-it-was-the-french-seriously-or-how-not-to-handle-a-social-media-rampage/
Seems the Guardian have caught onto this, good on you shrewd reporters, it looked like all the mainstream media was fooled for a while..
guardian.co.uk/culture/2009/apr/13/amazon-gay-writers
EDIT 16:42 BST: NEW:
guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/14/amazon-derank-books-sexuality - "Amazon's de-ranking is not just a glitch"
EDIT 17:55 BST:
@ indietv: As someone that has worked at amazon ranking queries do not just change themselves, this glitch thing is a lie.
18:36 BST
humansatwork.com/the-lessons-of-amazonfail, "The lessons of Amazonfail", really good article
19:18 BST
Even if Amazon decide to relist the LGBT stuff, there still remains the issue of deranking and delisting (censoring from searches) all "adult" books.
For a start, who decides what is "adult"? There's no oversight, no accountability - and Amazon almost has a monopoly, as plenty of others have pointed out (for example the comments from the BBC blog in my first post up top) - When a company is pretty much the Google of Books it matters that they act responsibly and not as some kind of "guardian of moral values" as they see fit...
20:21 BST Someone else agrees: blog.vromans.com/amazonfail-the-cost-of-freedom
19:56 BST
industry.bnet.com/technology/10001393/amazons-conflicting-censorship-stories-show-problems, Excellent article that looks beyond just the industry standard automated PR "damage control" response being spammed out by Amazon.
9:59 BST, Wednesday 15th April:
New articles, great summary here: dearauthor.com/wordpress/2009/04/14/why-amazons-explanation-is-none-at-all
also: edrants.com/amazonfail-a-call-to-boycott-amazon
Status 10:05 BST, Wednesday 15th April:
From Twitter:
seventhwave: even with the books reranked, the homosexuality search still starts with 4 pages of "curing" and "faith". #amazonfail
View Tweet
10:18 BST, Wednesday 15th April::
nother good new article: pandagon.net/index.php/site/comments/amazon_fail_a_follow_up/
13:120 BST, Wednesday 15th April:
From Twitter:
MysticSpiral: #amazonfail is what it is because of a lack of sensitivity to anything "DIFFERENT" it's not just LGBT.
Hps_Sterling : #amazonfail continues. Polyamory books & BDSM instructional books *POOF*. So much for research.
aaronkirsten: I want to see an apology on the homepage, linking to a new transparent and unambiguous policy on adult material #amazonfail
View Tweet
20:05 BST, Wednesday 15th April:
aemeliaclare.livejournal.com/7213.html
Why the BBC has no official article on the story, and does not even link to their bloggers anymore from the front page (it's front page news on Guardian CNN etc..):
Google Cache: www.revolutionmagazine.com/news/591735/BBC-signs-download-deal-Amazons-Unbox-service
22:40 BST, Wednesday 15th April:
neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/12/amazonfail_and_the_politics_of_anti_corporate_cybe r_activism
00:05 BST, Thursday 16th April:
Via Twitter:
Newlady1: #amazonfail Amazon stock woes. ecommercetimes.com/perl/board/mboard.pl?board=ecttalkback&thread=16461&id=16462& display=1
View Tweet
02:52 BST, Thursday 16th April:
@ hot_linkz_test: #AmazonFail: how one company will lose millions #glitchmyass : http://bit.ly/1f2FY3
@ utterings: "Since #amazonfail began, they’ve lost just shy of $1.1B of market cap": http://tinyurl.com/d4mj47
Quote:
AMZN closed today at 77.22. Down 2.55 since #amazonfail began, underperforming Dow, S&P, NASDAQ. Bezos personally down $247.8 million. To put it another way: since #amazonfail began, they’ve lost just shy of $1.1B of market cap, and god knows what’s happened to cash flow.
Comment by Hal O'Brien - April 14, 2009 at 4:26 pm
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04:02 BST, Thursday 16th April:
vashtan Why we shouldn't just forget #amazonfail eroticawriter.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/why-we-should-not-forget-amazonfail
View Tweet
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