Slashdot Mirror
Amazon Culls "Offensive" Books From Search System
Miracle Jones writes "Amazon has instituted an overnight policy that removes books that may be deemed offensive from their search system, despite the sales rank of the book and also irrespective of any complaints. Bloggers such as Ed Champion are calling for a 'link and book boycott,' asking people to remove links to Amazon from their web pages and stop buying books from them until the policy is reversed. Will this be bad business for Amazon, or will their new policies keep them out of trouble as they continue to grow and replace bookstores?"
Apparently leather-fetish nazi self-help materials.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Because that's what people are worried about seeing removed.
It's a corporate website that can do anything within the law. FTA;
Evidently, Amazon's starting to stick their "adult" shit in a virtual back room behind a virtual curtain, and his book got fingered in the first wave.
But the books are still available even. It's just that Amazon decided to cordon off adult material into a different section, like many brick and mortar stores. This article should have never been on Slashdot in the first place.
I removed all Amazon affiliate links from my sites some time ago for unrelated reasons: extremely low CTR (even on highly relevant articles), "funny" reporting on their stats system that didn't jive with my internally monitored figures, and crappy support.
This gives me yet another reason to steer people away from their programs.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Smell's coming from under that bridge there. Can't quite place it...
I used a fresh browser session so I waasn't logged in and I searched for Brokeback Mountain and the Filly and found them both.
Did they change policy?
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
What they have the books in the 1st place if they dont plan to sell them or at least being locatables?
If some search results requires i.e. over certain age to see them, so be it, but not for every user.
Amazon has no obligation to advertise (or even sell) books that the company considers detrimental to their business. It may be that they will eventually limit themselves to politically correct generic choices that offend no one - but again it's up to them to decide.
This will only create more business opportunities for other people to sell what Amazon doesn't. The barrier of entry into book selling online is very low. Everyone who whines and screams right now should be registering domains and dusting their LAMPs off.
actually from TFA that was the stuff amazon LEFT.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
One item that I find very offensive is that Amazon is classifying GLBT material as adult, while not designating similar heterosexual titles as such.
They are a private company and are free to classify items how they wish. Similarly, I can choose where to spend my money. I'll spend my money with a company that celebrates diversity. Not one that is so blatantly prejudicial.
Citations:
http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11992.html (contains growing list of books)
http://markprobst.livejournal.com/15293.html (screen caps and more info)
I wish there was a fscking blue pill
They are everything Amazon is not, privately owned, good to their employees, socially responsible even when it doesn't show up in the press. They even have some brick and mortar locations (Portland OR, and Chicago). And the toll free phone number to contact then is on the front of the web page instead of being something you can only find in a 3rd party blog around Christmas time.
Are they perfect? No. Are they small enough to care what even one or two percent of their customers think? YES. When corporations get too big they get arrogant, it is in your interests to not let companies you like feel as if they can ignore you. Punish bad behavior with vocal and public criticism.
And to all those who say they are just creating an adult section, ask your self why children's books that try to discuss homosexuality delicately are delisted, but racy explicit romances is not.
Insert pithy comment here.
They have no obligation to let Amazon make changes they dislike and not complain about them. It may be that they could buy from somewhere else that doesn't pull such bullshit instead of (or in addition to) complaining; but again, it's up to them to decide.
90/male/brazil
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Any word on what this means for Amazon's unobtrusive sex toy section?
Abunga http://abunga.com/ was a "family friendly" alternative to Amazon. Abunga was similar to Amazon but people could vote on books being family unfriendly. If a book received enough votes it was removed from the website. Abunga failed miserably. It isn't clear to me why, given Abunga's failure, Amazon would do this. Censorship on the internet even when you have a right to engage in the censorship (as Amazon does as a non-government organization) frequently pisses off far more people than you make happy.
The source of this article is not exactly a main line news source. Can anyone corroborate this?
I see 3 comments posted after 8:13, so it's not currently archived.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Erotica books were removed from page rankings. This particularly impacts gay-themed books since they're labeled more often as erotica, even when they have real plots. "Brokeback Mountain" get's no ranking while "Clan of the Cave Bear," with its throbbing members entering vaginas, gets a ranking. Meanwhile "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" sits happily with a ranking. Amazon is censoring sex, the fucking pansies, while considering hate-speech OK for the wider audience.
She's clearly 18 but shaves and just happens to like to dress like a school girl. What's the harm in that?
LA Times blog ok? http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/04/amazon-deranks-gayfriendly-books-the-twitterverse-notices.html
90/male/brazil
I need to tell you something. I'm Chris Hansen with Dateline NBC.
'The Bonfire of the Vanities'?
'Atlas Shrugged'?
The collective works of Jacqueline Susann?
After all, this isn't 19th Century Boston.
Sig this!
What's he whining about? His book has a rank of 6,811 in the electronic (Kindle) edition, which is quite good for a niche book. It's at the top of "Any Category > Books > Gay & Lesbian > Literature & Fiction > Fiction > Romance > Gay". Amazon published the author's note promoting his web site, his YouTube video, and a bunch of other links.
If there's a problem here, it's that Amazon seems to be heavily favoring the on-line Kindle editions.
When Facebook started to delete pictures of breastfeeding moms as "offensive" there was the same outcry - and a few months later no one really cares anymore.
I bet Amazon is playing the same card. They know very well that people will complain but they also know that people forget faster than a fly.
Does your public library have a prominent gay porn section? Mine doesn't seem to, but maybe things are different where you are.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Amazon most particularly is not required to stock any books that it does not want to, for any reason or no reason whatsoever. Nor report any sales to the general public.
What Amazon has done is make a business decision that it preferred annoying GLBT people and their allies rather than "The Moral Majority"types who undoubtedly complained.
Perhaps a rather sad state of affairs, but probably accurately reflective of Amazon's customer base. You cannot legislate preference or tastes, let alone morality.
Glass half-empty or half-full? One can at least be happy Amazon carries the books at all.
I've always felt vaguely guilty about all the box I've ordered from Amazon over the years. Probably about 800-900ish. It's just so damned convenient to click n ship, and with Amazon Prime, I don't pay for 2day (or greater) shipping.
However, it does have an impact;
- Extra (recyclable) packing material
- Extra resource usage in shipping and delivery (fuel etc)
- Most importantly, I really love smaller, independent bookstores.
I work on the same block as Elliot Bay Books in Seattle, yet almost never go in there. Several other good bookstores are in the area.
I supposed one could argue that I'm providing work for people regardless - I guess it comes down to where you want your support in the form of money to go. This article brings up a very late new years resolution - buy most books in local bookstores!
WRT to this article, I found it to be particularly sensationalist and uninteresting. Amazon does have a huge issue in restricting 'adult' material such as pr0n, sex toys etc - not to mention unexpected search results (try like 'Girl Scout Cookies') and this is clearly not the way to address it. However it's not like they're refusing to sell or display adult books.
I've just compared the listing for Brokeback Mountain on the US Amazon site with that on the UK Amazon site. I can't see a sales rank on the US version, but there's one on the UK version.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
A friend of mine has a son who is a major department head at Amazon, and he's gay. So I have to point out this is not a witch hunt against gays.
Just because Amazon happens to employ gay individuals in positions of relative importance does not mean that the company as a whole isn't on an anti-gay witch hunt to appease the religious right-winger nutjobs. A good capitalist will gleefully oppress their own kind to make a profit.
Knowledge != Intelligence
I can understand Amazon not wanting erotic books to show up when social conservatives or children do searches, but the implementation described makes no sense. If they want users to be able to filter, give them the choice the way Google does. Perhaps even default to "safe search", but allow users to choose "full search", or provide a more nuanced system with multiple categories that can be excluded.
In any case, there's no reason that a book should be excluded from sales rank in order to exclude it from search results. Surely Amazon has better programmers than that.
I also have to point out people have no right to tell any store what they can and can't sell
Of course they do. It's called the free market. It goes like this:
1) Amazon decides to categorize what they sell in a manner that a certain group of people finds objectionable.
2) The offended group responds by withholding their business from Amazon.
3) If the losses Amazon suffers from this are above a certain threshold, they will reverse the policy; if not, they won't.
Every interest group in America uses this approach all the time. It was probably an interest group that caused the policy decision at Amazon in the first place. It's Amazon's fiduciary responsibility to maximize its income, so it will appease whichever group spends more money.
Andrew Sulliva;s Virtually Normal has been delisted: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/04/amazon-delists-gay-books-as-adult.html Sullivan's post may be misleadingly titled: is Virtually Normal, (a non-fiction book about gay rights, from a conservative perspective) a "gay-themed" book? Or is it just that its politics is likely to make someone uncomfortable?
Um, you know Disney was the backing behind Dimention films, a major horror film distributor, right?
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
I greatly deem the Left Behind series of books to be extremely offensive, how do I get these results to match up with the books and movies that they decide are offensive?
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Do a search on 'homosexuality' on the main page of Amazon now. If that's a genuine search result, Amazon has issues above and beyond just delisting books.
I'm an atheist who used my mod points. Yes, I would be outraged if they did the same to religious books. I may not believe what you believe, but I will never side with those who would silence your faith.
Some time ago, some friends invited us to a baptism at their church. We went in order to be polite. They had a place for the toddlers and little kids to go and play, and hear bible stories. Which didn't bother me, until I realized that in this context these weren't stories - they were true lessons. The children would likely be asked to repeat back and affirm what they had learned about Jesus or God or what have you. I don't know that I have ever felt so protective towards my son. I had to get him out of there *right now*. I don't think about religion much, so I had never realized how passionately I feel. And in that moment I understood how many religious people must feel. I may not respect their religion, but I do respect people as human beings with a fundamental right to believe what they want - and yes, to teach it to their kids.
So don't run around making stereotypes of those who don't believe what you do. I have seen religious Americans on TV about the depravity of atheists, about how perhaps they should not even be recognized as full citizens. Then I have seen atheists turn around and say exactly the same thing about believers. Don't stand for that stupid, stupid ignorance and hate. We are still friends with that family. That is one of the greatest things about our society.
By the way, I think your opt-in/opt-out solution (yes, YouTube does that, as does Google) is perfect.
.co.jp soulds like a phishing, hackers or leet speak to middle America. .com :)
So I think, the PR team only cares about
But there is a wider political push for control of the adult books and sites.
I wonder if credit card use of this new 'section' will be flagged and passed on to customs agents around the world?
"crap" is passed on to you, adult orders are opened and arrive weeks later covered in yellow tape?
One day you get a letter to report for a 'chat' at a set time.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Certainly. And their customers have a right to know exactly what sort of practices they're engaging in, so that those consumers can make an educated decision about where to spend their money.
I, personally, would probably not be looking for many of the books that are erroneously being delisted as "adult," so I may not have noticed this myself. But now that I've been made aware of it, I can disapprove and take my money elsewhere.
That tells me this is a bunch of bullshit and no need to read any further.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
No, an L.A. Time blog is not acceptable. Blogs don't have the same journalistic requirements as an actually article so they are not an acceptable source of anything but rumor.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
There has got to be some kind of humor found in a guy saying that who goes by Alf's Boner...
Xaotik Designs
Theres a shocker, someone does something you don't agree with so you scream 'censorship by the evil company'.
Ever wonder why normal people don't care about this shit and look at you like your stupid when you whine about it?
Ever hear of the boy who cried wolf?
Just because you don't agree with it doesn't mean its censorship.
From dictionary.com:
censorship [sen-ser-ship] ...
noun
1. the act or practice of censoring.
censor [sen-ser] ...
noun
1. an official who examines books, plays, news reports, motion pictures, radio and television programs, letters, cablegrams, etc., for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable on moral, political, military, or other grounds.
2. any person who supervises the manners or morality of others.
verb (used with object)
6. to examine and act upon as a censor.
7. to delete (a word or passage of text) in one's capacity as a censor.
(some text censored as irrelevant to the current discussion)
--
Next time, open your mind before you open your mouth.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
I'm from Ministry of Fairness, Niceness, and Free Ponies at Taxpayer Expense, and would like to have a meeting with you.
We will be in touch...
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
Typo in summary: "there" should be "their".
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/04/amazon-deranks-gayfriendly-books-the-twitterverse-notices.html
wow, twitterverse? really? I also think I saw a try at twittersphere. what will they think of next?
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
that joke only works if the other person was previously established as under 18.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
I don't think dropping links to Amazon will be big enough to make them stop this policy. However, we can certainly turn it to our advantage. According to Amazon's policy page (http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200277420&qid=1239590370&sr=2-1) Amazon prohibits "Listings for items that promote racism, hatred, or religious intolerance" which is a fair description of every book by Anne "we should invade their countries and convert them to Christianity" Coulter, Glenn Beck, Bill O'Reilly, and others of their ilk.
"Amazon encourages sellers to report listings that violate our policies or any applicable law by using our Contact Us form. Select "Report a Community Rules Violation" and be sure to include all relevant information so we can conduct a thorough investigation."
If enough of us report these bestselling bigots they're sure to make the offensive list too. This has two beneficial effects: first, people will have a harder time stumbling upon these hate-filled volumes, and second, these authors will complain to Amazon and (hopefully) get the policy lifted.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Of course I thought very hard about why I had such a strong reaction. The main reason? I am very close to my son. His faith would create a barrier between us. I have very strong moral convictions. I want to pass my values on to him, and I look forward to discussing such things with him when he's older. Doctrinaire religion would cut communication off at the knees.
Of course he is his own person. When he is capable of making his own decisions, he will be free to believe what he wants to believe and listen to what he wants to listen to. My long-term job as a parent is not to tell him what to believe (or, at this age, to let others do that either) but to enable him to make those choices. (I very much doubt you are a parent, or you wouldn't make ridiculous suggestions about "censorship" of a 3 year-old.)
One of the other problems in this situation is that if he was taught to believe the bible story, I would feel obliged to respond. But I don't want to intervene against religion either. He doesn't need to know at all at this age. Besides, beliefs are secondary. It is values I wish to teach, not religion (pro or anti). How would it make our friends or their son feel if my boy told theirs that there is no God?
Burn baby burn
It was sarcasm. Disney has it's hands in more than just Dimension. I used to work for them, horror is VERY profitable for them. But mom and pop don't want their kiddies to know about that. Squeaky clean and all that.
Arg! I have no idea why that posted anonymously, I didn't intend to...
I think I'll complain about the bible; the level of sex and violence in that book is beyond the pale.
The fine "article" says "AMAZON IS A GAY-HATING COMPANY FOR NAZIS" and includes a lovely swastika graphic declaring the author to be "Gay, White, and Proud".
Must be that New Journalism we keep hearing about.
Advice: on VPS providers
I was surfing through Amazon to confirm the story, and sure enough, all the copies of Brokeback Mountain and Lady Chatterley's lover I pulled up had no sales rank figures.
So I called my girlfriend over to see, and when I searched up the same items, I now saw sales ranks on all of them. In fact, digging through now I can't find any items of this sort without sales rank. Including Probst's The Filly, the very item cited in TFA.
Did Amazon reverse this policy in just the last ten minutes?
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
Well, I am already boycotting Amazon because they continue to sell dog fighting videos and magazines that promote the illegal, cruel sport. So what's one more boycott? It is not ok to sell that kind of stuff up front or out of their "back room" as much as it is not OK to sell snuff films. So I guess I agree that it is OK to boycott a company if you don't agree with their practices. (Not that I think that they give one rat's ass)
I think most people here would be much more upset.
Sure, I think sex themes and porn aren't a big deal and many people would be happier if they weren't so prudish about it (my wife and I certainly appreciate porn). I'm also in the religion is a bunch of superstitious nonsense group but unlike adult content few people would even suspect that religious content was being cordoned off so it would be a greater barrier to the free access to ideas.
Of course ultimately I think this is really about customer service and transparency more than censorship. It's not evil or wrong for Bezos to choose not to sell whatever he finds objectionable but I feel there is a certain implicit trust that most of us place in amazon that it's not secretly sculpting what books it lets you see and keeping the "bad" ones hidden. If I think amazon isn't keeping that trust I'll find a bookstore to use that does. If amazon made sure to publisize what sort of books it would be hiding then it's not as big of a deal.
Of course I expect this will turn out to be nothing big.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Yeah, that's really not how it works...
Apparently Amazon is calling it a "glitch".
Yes, but the important difference is that we expect the local library to be deliberately excluding this kind of racy material. On the other hand if the local library refused to stock novels containing even brief sex scenes with gay sex, anal penetration or teenage sexuality or any other sort of content that one wouldn't normally expect to be excluded I think they are breaching the public trust if they don't make the community aware.
If amazon wants to put the adult books in the back they can go ahead (though some of us might switch to other bookstores) but I think they are breaching the consumer's trust if they do so without warning them.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Search for "marijuana" sort by "bestselling" and most returns are irrelevant, with some 12 step and abstinence titles in the mix.
Ben Masel: 51,282 votes for US Senate in the Wisconsin Democratic Primary
I've never understood why people get so worked up about independent bookstores.
Yes, historically, the chains like waldenbooks would carry a very limited selection and the independent bookstores were often the only place to go to get something that wasn't a bestseller. Then the mega bookstores like borders and barnes and noble started to take over and since they stocked a much bigger selection it wasn't as big a deal anymore but still independent bookstores were often the only place to find certain kinds of niche books.
However, the internet booksellers have pretty much everything. The independent booksellers are dying because they no longer offer anything the cheaper internet booksellers like amazon don't. Sure, we lost a bit of atmosphere and the fun of going in and browsing but that's a fair trade for the convenience, price and selection of the online sellers.
I mean is this really any different than gripping about the fact that people won't pay extra to keep mall gadget shops (sharper image) open so you have somewhere fun to hang out with massage chairs when you go to the mall with your spouse?
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
Can someone do the math? If we started an online movement to short the stock at a specific time and date, how many stock would each of us have to short in order to actually drive the stock down?
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 34 55 89 144 233 377 610 987 1597 2584 4181 6765
On the other hand I bet amazon ends up sending a lot less ripped off book covers back to the publisher wasting both the resources used to print that book plus the transit and disposal. Also you don't jump in your car to drive to the bookstore.
Also it's not like UPS uses a new truck for every package that's sent so the loss is only the fuel for the delivery truck to add your house to the existing route and some losses due to the lower efficiencies for the long haul trucks with less dense loads.
So I would guess that on average ordering from amazon results in less waste than picking the book up at the bookstore. For most consumers the bookstore will be significantly farther out of their way than their house was for the UPS delivery guy and the wasted unsold inventory will pick up any remaining slack.
---
As an aside is it even a net benefit to recycle paper products. Paper mainly comes from tree farms and by recycling it we reduce the carbon taken out of the air.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
How about going to Amazon (they have a website) and looking for yourself? Andrew Sullivan's book, Virtually Normal, which is NOT erotica or adult themed has no ranking.
Same for Same-sex Marriage: A Pro and Con Reader. Which is, as the title suggests, a book concerning the arguments for and against gay marriage.
Same for Love Undetectable.
But his book The Conservative Soul: Fundamentalism, Freedom, and the Future of the Righ has a ranking, so the delisting is not targeting specific authors, but almost any title that isn't openly hostile to gays has been delisted.
Consider:
101 Frequently Asked Questions About Homosexuality. No sales rank.
What the Bible Really Says About Homosexuality. No sales rank.
Homosexuality and Civilization. No sales rank.
When Homosexuality Hits Home: What to Do When a Loved One Says They're Gay. No sales rank.
Some more well-known books:
Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military. No sales rank. This is one of the definitive histories of gays and lesbians in the US military.
Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Debating the Gay Ban in the Military. No sales rank.
Major Conflict: One Gay Man's Life in the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell Military. No sales rank.
Dont: A Readers Guide to the Militarys Anti-Gay Policy. No sales rank.
NONE of these have adult themes.
But it's not universal... for example:
A book such as A Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality. Has a sales rank.
Can Homosexuality be Healed?. Has a sales rank.
You Don't Have to be Gay. Has a sales rank.
Now, perhaps there is a perfectly rational explanation, but looking at the evidence, I smell something funny.
Humorless sig goes here.
Here are two sources, saying that there was a mistake in the system.
AP: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iFAIOIDnSsgrsaXKgoEH9kaWAmlwD97HAGUO1
La time (blog) http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/04/amazon-responds-to-adult-queries-blames-a-glitch.html
Don't like Amazon? Go to your local bookstores! Oh wait, there aren't any any more! That's right. Everybody and their mother wanted to save an extra quarter so the local bookstores are all gone. Bummer, huh? Too bad people are really, really stupid en masse.
*WOOSH* Use A9 (*) to find a sense of humor. * A9 is Amazon's search engine. I'm telling you this now so you don't miss another point.
The are mega book outets that tend to put smaller, more service oriented outlets out out of business.
Dude, present hyperventilating over something that appears to have already been fixed, I'm having a HARD time thinking of companies that are better to work with than Amazon.
Ordering? Easy. Very, very, very easy.
Inventory and convenience? You name it, they've got it. I can order a few paperbacks, a couple of CDs, an iPod, some deodorant and a pack of razor blades all at once, and they'll be at my door in two days thanks to prime. And all at a lower price than local stores offer.
Reviews? Generally plentiful.
Shipping? Quick, efficient, almost always "same day" if you get it in before 3:30 Pacific. And as a Prime member, free two-day shipping on virtually everything Amazon sells is a life changer. Fewer trips to the store, lower prices, and easy, quick, reliable ordering.
Have a problem? Drop them a line and they have an option to either call you back immediately (or at a specified time) or extremely quick email responses. Granted, I've made over a hundred orders from Amazon and had to use this service precisely twice (both due to carrier screw-ups).
I'll take Amazon ANY day over the "independent" bookstores around town. Better service, less time rummaging through poorly organized books, and no sales staff whose sole purpose in life seems to be to remind you to "buy local!" so they can continue to eek out a tiny living because they "love books".
I've seen a few nice little indy bookstores, don't get me wrong, but they're either a) institutions (Shakespeare & Co., Paris) or b) have something else going for them (a great little restaurant/hot chocolate/coffee place that also sells good used and new books). These can work.
...at Amazon.
And now I have a great reason to make my next purchase there too!
Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs." -- John Rogers
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
What do you really expect from Amazon.
A patent application for one-click book-burning?
Is this the only one of your comments that isn't at -1?
No changes on amazon.co.uk, I can see all these "unranked" books just fine in their ranking system. Not so for the amazon.com site. Maybe you've hit on the old "SEX=BAD" problem. Another example of this is Grand Theft Auto (steal cars and kill people, totally illegal) being fine for older kids; but when it's found that the main character can engage in a sex game with his lady friend (not illegal for older kids and necessary for the existence of life) the game is banned and then later released x-rated. Go figure.
I blame obese conservative wankers in suits who think that sex only exists on Sunday evenings through a hole in a sheet, when absolutely necessary, and between a married man and woman in their late 30s who don't actually know each other anymore. These are the people who's lawns are identical and for whom "different" is a virtue of the satanic and godless heathen who deserves to burn in hell for eternity. Lets just boycott these obese wankers.
In the mean time, good luck with your amazon.com campaign. My tip: order from the UK site. You'll have to wait a while longer for your books, but with the british pound worth less than a teaspoon full of gooseshit and falling you'll probably get a good deal :P
This message was scanned by European governments and contains no terrorism.
Does your public library have a prominent gay porn section? Mine doesn't seem to, but maybe things are different where you are.
No, but then the article mentions several books that aren't gay porn. It seems Amazon *intended* to drop porn from certain listings, but somehow managed to drop all books with gay themes even if they don't contain explicit sex. That's a very disturbing development, as it suggests that somebody in Amazon's categorisation department thinks that anything about homosexuality is offensive.
Removed material include:
Annie Proulx's Brokeback mountain.
Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness.
(the only "sex scene" in The Well of Loneliness consists in its entirety of the words "And that night they were not divided.")
Alex Beecroft: False Colours, m/m historical romance, just broken through and ranking in top 10 historical novels-- i.e. non-romance, non-gay-- and then it suddenly disappeared entirely from the rankings. The novel is NOT erotica, contains only one non-explicit sex scene, but the central premise features two male characters falling in love.
Geez...
more: http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11992.html
1 Earth is warming, 2 It's us, 3 it's royally bad, 4 we need to take action NOW
Neither dictionary definitions nor common usage of "censorship" require that it be done in secret. I know for example that the UK government censored a paper on terrorism and can even point you at the source of this paper, but it is still on their censored list and they have arrested a UK academic who downloaded it.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I find it amusing that a search for "playboy" or "penthouse" doesn't seem to have been affected by this change. So erotica (particularly of the homosexual kind it seems) is suddenly too hardcore for customers, but the shit Playboy peddles is ok? As others have said, a simple "safe-search" would suffice.
You don't like amazon, stop buying their stuff..
That's the answer..
Just say no to license servers!!
I was surfing through Amazon to confirm the story, and sure enough, all the copies of Brokeback Mountain and Lady Chatterley's lover...
Woah, hold up a sec. Brokeback Mountain? The movie that has 60+ nominations and 3 Oscars to its name? THAT Brokeback Mountain?
Good luck on your distribution contracts with Hollywood in the future there Amazon. Er, you might want to put that (bridge) fire out before you get fined.
Though, if you do get your hands on a pony, you can make a free lunch out of it.
Hey, good idea! I wonder if Amazon has any cookbooks...
Amazon didnt want to stock The Complex: An Insider Exposes the Covert World of The Church of Scientology, in fact you cannot buy it from them in some countries, and they might not actually sell it.
author: Duignan, John
published: Merlin (published in Ireland)
isbn: 9781903582848
Amazons issue began when they started to sell 'everything' those who remember amazon as just a bookstore mean i don't take amazon seriously ever since they off shored customer queries to india and those guys smoke something weird.
I have not bought anything from amazon in years, yes i still buy books, and if i blog i quote isbn, and not provide links to an online bookstore.
If amazon want me to do free seo, they can pay me, but they don't.
Family friendly means your kids wait until they are mature to make decisions about their sexual futures.
Family friendly means you don't want someone else's values rammed down your throat.
I think Amazon picked sensibly. People say all sorts of stuff about diversity and justice, but when it comes time to buying homes or buying products for their families, they are conservative -- even if liberal in outlook.
One academic at Rice University studied how people vote with their feet, in contrast to what they identify as their political beliefs, in a study about how education breeds segregation because whites with higher education, even very liberal whites, avoid diverse neighborhoods.
If we are going to be scientists about this issue, we should look at the practicalities of pluralism. Pluralism means every group gets their own space; it doesn't mean we find one standard for all people, because that removes their right to have their own opinions.
Futurist Traditionalism
Back in the days when censorship was popular, everyone knew that it was going on and who was doing it.
The original name for the BBFC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBFC) was "British Board of Film Censors", and it was their government sponsored job to censor all film and TV. They kept the word "censors" in their name for about 70 years.
It's only these days, now that people have decided it is a bad thing, that it might need to be done in secret.
I agree that though it's Amazon's right to sell or not sell what they want it's also our right to boycott and/or otherwise protest their policy. Nevertheless, it isn't censorship on Amazon's part. Amazon is not a government or other authority or monopoly so we are still free to shop elsewhere and many will.
While I do agree that "censorship" may be the wrong verbage, there's a damn fine line between censorship and filtering of search results(or "cleansing our search database"), which IS what is going on here (ref. Great Firewall of China for more on this). Hate to say this, but many would still call that "censorship"
Point here is it's a really stupid move on a corporation that has based its uniqueness and identity on the customers feedback and input.
Without the rankings, reviews, and feedback, Amazon would be just another cheap bookstore. Hell, I can drive down the street for that, so yeah, you're right, people can and likely will shop elsewhere.
Well, let's just ski on down that slippery slope. I'm pretty sure we can find some large, athletic women who would find the word "Amazon" offensive... said women should request that any search results returning links to any page with this unacceptable word on it be removed from site...
In other news, Amazon Inc. has reportedly filed to reserve the domain name, happygoluckystuffonline.com...
The bible has some rather explicit passages about incest and rape.
How about Lot and his daughters (Genesis 19):
That would be catagorized as a date rape in today's society. And of course incesteous.
Then there's this nice bit (2 Kings 13):
Personally I find these tings more offensive than a story about two people of the same gender who truly love eachother ...
I doubt any single group (unless they are a majority of the customers) will get them to change their minds.
Luckily for us, this snowballs quite readily. Soon, it will spread to other anti-interest groups. They'll start lobbying Amazon to remove more and more content until Amazon can't handle the load of complaints and requests, let alone actually sell any products.
They were a -lot- better off when they were being impartial. (Or at least pretending.)
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Godwin already!?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
And you're going to get that past Dept. Homeland Security HOW?
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Mine doesn't either, when last I checked - but it does have nonfiction books that discuss it. It looks like all sorts of books dealing with homosexuality were removed, except for some notable anti-homosexuality texts (such as the aforementioned "Parent's Guide to Preventing Homosexuality"). If the topic is too racy for amazon to sell or rank, fine - but the issue is when the topic is only too racy if the work disagrees with Amazon's stated position (which is apparently "Homosexuality is bad, mmm-kay").
I note also that works such as Mein Kempf are still ranked and available. Surely there are themes there that bear examination?
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
I'm surprised by assumption people are making here about censorship needing to be about an absolute lack of access. On Amazon, lots of people type in a topic, and don't get beyond a few pages before they buy something or tire of looking. Given that the rank of books on a topic are listed by sales rank, as far as I can tell, that means that stripping out the sales ranks of certain books makes them much harder to access. Which is part of why the argument above that they're 'catering to their market' doesn't quite work: if that were the case, then the 'offensive' books would be the 'unpopular' books; i.e., they'd come up last in any given search, and we wouldn't even be having this conversation. It's also not affecting a fair proportion of het porn and romance, whilst gay porn and gay romance (or even just literature *about* gay people e.g. "Oranges are not the only fruit") have been stripped of their ranks. But it's not just content designed to arouse that's being de-ranked: self-help books and even academic texts are being affected, even though studies of minorities such as GLBT and studies of sexuality more generally have been accepted areas of academic study for some time now. The main issue, I think, is that this is affecting how searches work. Try searching for "A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory" and you'll only be offered the hard cover versions, which are currently out of print. In order to find the current, in-print version, you have to search under the author's name. It doesn't need to be overt censorship when these kinds of subtle rearrangements of db searches are going on: it's only because I already knew all the details of the book I was searching for that I knew to keep looking til I found it. This is particularly problematic as many people rely on Amazon to have one of the most up-to-date dbs of books in the world, and info about which version is currently in print - and this includes people who work in bookstores...
A glitch is a bug or a fuck up. It's nothing like a policy decision to remove adult, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning material.
press release
I don't agree with censorship of any kind in any form. I'm straight so this being a GLBTQ issue doesn't bother me. What does bother me is that Amazon.com can adopt a policy like this.
Give users a safesearch option (like Google), if they're sensitive to stuff like this or homophobic, but don't inflict it on everyone. Amazon.co.uk hasn't implemented the policy but I'd guess it will happen really soon.
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
Thanks for the clarification. You've made it very clear that you have either have no idea what you've just cut and pasted, or you have no idea what Amazon is doing. Under which part of that definition does removing sales rankings from Amazon's proprietary system fall under?
an official who examines books ... for the purpose of suppressing parts deemed objectionable
Not this one. No one is suppressing any part of the books themselves. They simply removed them from their sales ranking displays.
any person who supervises the manners or morality of others
Pretty sure this doesn't apply. Amazon isn't sitting over you telling you that you can't buy the book.
to examine and act upon as a censor.
They haven't fit any definition of acting as a censor yet, so it must be...
to delete (a word or passage of text) in one's capacity as a censor.
And anyone with any common sense knows that deleting a word or passage of text FROM YOUR OWN WORK isn't censorship.
Do it just like Google image search -- everyone defaults to safe mode and you can then turn it off if you don't want to be mollycoddled. As for what goes on the list, just categorize the books properly and allow them to be on your exclusion list. Do you want romance, g-rated, r-rated, x-rated, or none of the above?
I have no problem with giving individuals the means to filter their results so long as their views aren't imposed upon the majority. I personally have no use for religion but it would be rather rude of me to demand that all religious books be made 18+ saying they're not suitable for young, impressionable minds. I happen to believe that's the case but it's my choice to not expose kids to that kind of material and I can impose my standards on kids I'm responsible for, not the entire world.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
The only problem with the free-market point of view on this particular issue is that Amazon is omnipotent and controls such a huge market share. It's similar to the case with Wal Mart. Several recording artists were hurt badly when Wal Mart took their albums off the shelves for similar reasons (controversial content), effectively cutting a staggering number of consumers off from the artists since Wal Mart was the only distribution channel they bought their music through. Many people get their books solely through Amazon, and a competing site with access to books deemed inappropriate by Amazon may not be able to offer those books for such low prices (vis a vis economy of scale) thus controlling the literature that many people are exposed to. of course, they could just suck it up and get a library card...
I found this story on huffington post.
According to the article it was a glitch that "Caused Site To Strip Sales Rankings From Gay/Lesbian Books".
Should be interesting to see how fast they back pedal on this one.
UPS Sucks
Does your public library have a prominent gay porn section? Mine doesn't seem to, but maybe things are different where you are.
No, but my private library...
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
He did it for the lulz: How to cause moral outrage from the entire internet in ten lines of code
What! No free toaster?????! Those dudes TOTALLY lied to me.
1. Low price trumps everything else. Customer service, convenience, product quality, whatever.
2. Quantity beats Quality every time.
So Amazon having 10x more books than the local bookstore at lower prices means the local bookstore gets driven out of business.
***insert kindle joke here***
How about this then... they instead simply keep the "offensive" books in the searches, but offer to include a book of matches and lighter fluid as an add-on for them. Then users who want the books removed can simply buy them all up and burn them by themselves.
8==8 Bones 8==8
I'm SO swiping that quote for my tagline collection.
Why does Brokeback Mountain have a sales ranking? It is, I think, one of the best known pro-gay books out there.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
I went to Amazon's main page and did a search for Mark Probst, the author mentioned in TFA. "The Filly", his book also mentioned in TFA shows up on the top of the list (which is a big list with a bunch of stuff about Survivor). I went to the page and "The Filly" has a sales ranking. It listed as the number 1 selling book in the G and L literature catagory. If anyone is curious, this book has a sales ranking of #77,928.
Apart from making it appear higher in the results listings, nothing at all. As if anybody looks at the results at the top of the list first - it's preposterous!
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
That's some mighty fine hypocrisy there, coming from one of slashdot's most prolific and whiny recent posters.
So, really, why are you here? Everything I see from you is an obnoxious too-sure-of-itself rant about how everyone except people who think exactly like you is an idiot.
If you hate it so much, just GTFO and be happier in your life. Find something that's more to your tastes and interests, maybe you'll like the people there better. Good luck finding a new online hangout, I wish you all the best.
According to this, the mass downrating of purportedly-gay-themed books at Amazon was engineered from the outside.
Ideas on how to verify this?
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
Update: someone claims to have been responsible for this by using a XSS to remove tags and force accounts to tag books as innappropriate.
So if it is true, Amazon isn't to blame here.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
And stores selling sensitive or expensive items, that supervise my manner of eating messy subs, are excercising censorship!
Not to mention toy stores not selling adult toys...
No, but I can go check out Brokeback Mountain and Naked Lunch...
snig
It's also fiction and must be interpreted, and quite well known.
It looks like they were censoring the 'self-help' books that explicitly say 'it's okay to be gay, here's how to cope with who you really are.' and other non-fiction type books, none of which I heard of.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Google has Safe Search available for images. As others have said, if all Amazon did was offer a Safe Search Yes/No option next to their search box then this would be a tempest in a teapot.
I'm willing to bet that if they did offer this, and tracked its usage, that they'd find out that virtually none of their customers would actually opt for it
We keep getting government nannys feeling we need V-chips for every aspect of our lives (are you listening Australia Internet government censors?). But when the choice arises, the Opt Out choice seems to win every time.
But what about the children? My children? The best V-chip is parental involvement in what your child is watching on the TV or their computer. You can't expect technology to substitute for effective parenting.
To hide a book (remove it from the card catalog, to use an obsolete reference) is to censor that book. Amazon, you're engaging in censorship and you can't call it anything else! As a bookseller you should be more anti-censorship than pro political correctness.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Never heard of that one, but I did take the Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries and print it out as a Required Reading list.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
Quoted from TFA.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
That one shouldn't be +5 Funny but +5 Insightful.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy
thegodmovie.com - watch it
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,163024/article.html
Put away the pitchforks...
Amazon has released more information. Apparently it was user error, 57 310 books were de-listed, and they are working to restore their ranks. This sounds to me to be fairly accurate; were it a deliberate policy change with an eye to being "family-friendly", it wouldn't make sense to do it covertly. After all, they would want to attract new customers to replace the ones alienated.
Well, the americans have always been a little, um, weird about sex.
If your US-version of amazon starts getting all worried about sex information, how about skipping to an european one? For example. the german version (www.amazon.de) also sells english books, and you don't need to know german at all to be able to order it...
(And yes, the english version of "Virtually Normal" showed up on the search)
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Weren't the Amazons a bunch of women who lived with each other to the exclusion of men? Shouldn't Amazon change (censor) its name?