Most people have likely already heard about the huge amazon.com fiasco by now. If not, basically all books having to do with lesbian/gay/transgendered themes have been deranked by Amazon. If you're not familiar with "book ranking," you should know that when you type in a book title or any search term into the Amazon search box, what comes up is based on the ranking of the book. If the book does not have a ranking, it either won't show up in the search or will only show up after a few pages. To prove my point, go to amazon.com and type in "homosexuality" and see what comes up. Take a look at the majority of the titles that come up. Yeah. Creepy, right?
In the official statement from Amazon on this, they claim it was just a glitch and was being fixed, but this is doubtful because certain authors have noticed their books being deranked since Feburary.
This came to light this past Sunday, when a self-published author noticed that some of his books had disappeared from Amazon's list, he emailed the company to ask what the deal was. The company's response to the author's query:
"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." [Source]
Interesting pattern of events, that... how something that was policy on Sunday becomes "a glitch" on Monday because Twitter lost its shit.
Bad move, Amazon. The utter senselessness of this censoring endeavor is brought even more starkly to light when you realize what books have been affected and which have not: Ellen DeGeneres' biography? Deranked. Heather Has Two Mommies? Deranked. Brokeback Mountain? Deranked. Lady Chatterly's Lover? Deranked.
Ron Jeremy's biography entitled "The Hardest (Working) Man In Showbiz?" Still ranked.. Autobiographies from porn stars from the 1980s? Amazon's still got 'em. An Orgy Of Playboys? You bet.
Oh, and if you'd like to learn how to "Tickle His Pickle," Amazon still has that book ranked too.
So, clearly, this "adult" labling of products on amazon.com is strangely slanted at best, and clearly biased at worst, considering how a lot of the deranked books are children's books, some are memoirs/autobiographies, and others are classics. Also quite strangely hit were books about disabled people and sex as books titled "The Sexual Politics of Disability" and "The Ultimate Guide to Sex and Disability" have also been deranked.
This is important on several levels, mainly for the issues with censorship it causes. Even if it doesn't bother you at all that the first book that comes up now when you search for "homosexuality" is A Parent's Guide To Preventing Homosexuality, you should be bothered at the completely arbitrary removal of certain titles as "adult" when they have nothing "adult" about them.
Besides, even if they only legit removed "adult" books regardless if they described homosexual or heterosexual sex with any level of disability, it should still bother you. Censorship sucks. Don't let media giants get away with it. One hopes that Amazon will either come up with one hell of a legit excuse or a beautifully worded apology, and I hope that until they do, you won't buy from them.
I say this because, well, I'm living in Kyrgyzstan and my online shopping is quite minimal these days, so I have to live vicariously through you. Get your books from Barnes & Nobel or Powells.
And, well, this is all. I'm going to Almaty tomorrow - see you in a week!
1 comment:
As a person with limited internet access, I have you say you're ridiculously informed.
An Amazon spokesman just officially said that if was "an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error" (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/04/amazon-begins-to-rerank-affected-books-theories-swirl.html). I guess it's not as satisfying outcome for some protesters (see Tweeter), but, personally, I'll take it.
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