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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."
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.
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.
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."
Amazon has no obligation to advertise (or even sell) books that the company considers detrimental to their business.
You're absolutely right. That said, their affiliates have no obligation to continue promoting their products if they disagree with Amazon's practices. I won't sell their stuff.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
I just hate this mindset, which is rather common here: "Why are you complaining? They're perfectly within their rights to do that!" The rebuttal is trivial: We're perfectly within our rights to rebuke them/boycott them/etc if we don't like their actions. If we're lucky they'll be shamed into acting better and/or decide that what they did was detrimental to their business...
David Gay
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.
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.
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.
LA Times blog ok? http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/04/amazon-deranks-gayfriendly-books-the-twitterverse-notices.html
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.
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.
Damn straight. This is America. We don't have an oppressive government, right? When one major corporate vendor drops you, you just pick yourself up by your own bootstraps and start a new store yourself. "Find a need and fill it," as Henry Ford and Ron Jeremy would no doubt agree.
So I'll just crank up my Linux/Apache skills and launch a storefront for erotica and other adult content, just like you're saying. Never mind Amazon Payments, I'll accept PayPal instead, and... wait, what?
You mean that any sufficiently-entrenched oligopoly is indistinguishable from an oppressive government?
Who would'a thunk it?
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?
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?
as I suggested why don't you just create an online book store that competes with Amazon
If it's such a awesomely profitable idea, why don't you do it yourself? Maybe you're already a busy person with a comfortable income? Maybe you're not interested in becoming a bookseller? And not to be overlooked: What happens if/when Amazon changes its mind two months later because a bunch of people disregarded your advice by boycotting, making noise, and shaming Amazon into reconsideration? Likely your little storefront and whatever time, energy and money you devoted to it would be instantly crushed.
Overall, this philosophy you're trying to convince everyone of, that the best response to an enterprise you disagree with is to directly compete with it, is, bluntly put, silly. If you don't like your Senator because she's too religious, you can't just vote against her, you have to run against her? If you don't like the latest blockbuster film because it's got bad science, you can't just be a critic, or warn your friends off, you have to produce and distribute your own film? If you don't like the music that's out there, boycotting the major labels is no good, you have to start your own band? Sure, some people will have the time, the ambition and the talent to make these kinds of responses worthwhile, and perhaps the world would be better if more of us had the courage to do so (although perhaps not...,) but for the vast majority of people it's simply unworkable for one reason or another.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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:
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.
What do you really expect from Amazon.
A patent application for one-click book-burning?
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
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