Slashdot Mirror
Was the Amazon De-Listing Situation a Glitch Or a Hack?
Miracle Jones writes "As Amazon struggles to re-list and re-rank gay, lesbian, and adult books on their website after massive public outcry against the secretive partitioning process, they are claiming that the entire situation was not the result of an intentional policy at all, are not apologizing, and are instead insisting that the situation was the result of 'a glitch' that they are now trying to fix. While some hackers are claiming credit for 'amazonfail,' and it is indeed possible that an outside party is responsible, most claims have already been debunked. How likely is it that Amazon was hacked versus the likelihood of an internal Easter weekend glitch? Or is the most obvious and likely scenario true, and Amazon simply got caught implementing a wildly-unpopular new policy without telling anyone?"
How do you know?
Services like Amazon could just have a personal preferences for users that allows them to selectively exclude either gay content or content from gay authors. Problem solved.
This is my sig.
So a few people get upset, make some noise, and it's suddenly wildly unpopular? I bet less than .1% of Amazon's customer base cares.
Over a few extra 'esses'.
Sig this!
If the claims for responsibility are even close to accurate, and they seem plausible, it wasn't a "hack" so much as gaming the system for consumers to complain of "adult content." Nothing was used in a way that it was not intended to be used, from a technical standpoint.
As for "implementing as wildly-unpopular new policy without telling anyone," there are reports of this going back to February, and very credible reports that thousands of romance novels were affected, probably more than the "gay" conent novels. Seems an odd thing for Amazon to do, don't you think?
But we'll never know, and articles like this are the reason why. If it was someone gaming the consumer tagging system, there is no way to explain it to the average person that will not make it sound like their web site was "hacked," which is to say, compromised. Given the rash of recent actual cracks involving hundreds of millions of credit card numbers, Amazon has damned good reason to not shoot from the hip in any public statements.
An apology for being so inept that a claim that a single person caused this with "ten lines of code" would be nice, though.
They're not apologizing? They did it on purpose. Now they're undoing it, because obviously it won't sell books. "We don't give a fuck about your sexual orientation, we just thought we could sell more shit. We were wrong, so you can have the search content back. Have a nice civil union, fuckers."
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Or maybe it was done by a rogue employee with an agenda ?
For some reason, the top search results are predominantly anti-homosexuality. I suspect a hack. I would respect amazon if they'd own up to it.
If this was an outside job, it's quite clever and the timing was perfect.
If nothing else, it's a major wake-up call as to just how much power Amazon has amassed over the media as we know it. If we were looking at an upcoming Orwellian future, Amazon is certainly one possible cornerstone for total information control, right next to sites like Google.
Perhaps it's time to step back a really take a good hard look at how exactly we get all our information and how easily it could be taken away from us.
(That said, I know Amazon doesn't have a monopoly, but their role is still significant, none-the-less...)
8==8 Bones 8==8
...and they use Amazon too?!?
Who woulda thunk?!
...Or it could be that most people who are homosexual wouldn't really need a book explaining it, whereas people who are anti-gay would read more books about it, and would be inclined to read anti-homosexual literature.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Maybe their anti-homosexuality books are just more popular?
Searching for "heterosexuality" brings up books critical of heterosexuality (as a norm or ideal) as well.
Was the Amazon De-listing Situation a Glitch Or a Hack?
Yes.
Additionally, Ed Champion is reporting that Amazon has finally broken today's silence to comment on the matter to him, calling the episode "a ham-fisted cataloging error." From Champion's website: "After multiple attempts to contact Amazon, I have at long last received the following reply from Patty Smith by email: "This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection. It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles -- in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search. Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future."
just like that, if you type "romance" would you thin you should see books about anti-romance? People that already know what romance is do not need books, but people looking to kill all you romantic ones does... (narf)
[end sarcasm]
I clicked on the link about hackers claiming credit for the Amazon hack expecting to find to find a professional web site about computer security.
Instead, I got a bizarrely colored and (hopefully) satirical blog containing articles titled "Amazon is a Gay-Hating Company for Nazis".
That'll teach me for trying to RTFA.
Yah, I do think it's interesting that the mix of books returned by Barnes and Noble are significantly different. Most of their results are either homosexual romances or books telling folk how to deal with friends and family who come out.
...But similarly, I'm not going to type in "Heterosexual romance" whenever I search. And its similar to all other controversial topics, abortion, gun control, etc that you are going to get at least two sides to the argument. When one side uses the "formal" term that is used to not offend, and the other side uses the slang term, when you type in the formal term you are going to get more arguments opposing it then for it. Anyone that I have met who was homosexual, did not refer to themselves as homosexual, but rather as gay or lesbian, just about everyone I have heard opposing the gay lifestyle uses the term homosexual.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Within this blog entry the following assertion was made:
This begs several questions. Is the above email genuine? If genuine, was the statement valid or was it an honest misstatement by a customer service person. If the quoted text is true, does Amazon in fact have a policy of excluding items that it considers porn, and was it this policy that was hacked?
I the policy does exist, isn't it much more likely that Amazon was modifying this policy and there was some sort of error in the code, or perhaps a over active coder introduced the feature.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
ham-fisted cataloging error
"Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence."
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Exceeding the appropriate speed for conditions gets you killed. "Speeding" just gets you ticketed.
Sums it up perfectly.
It is just a prolonged April Fools' joke, and they need to "harden" their security measures.
Sounds like they needed the drug that start with letter V.
Especially Modern Bride magazine.
What if it wasn't an official policy, but someone with database access decided to go on a crusade on this point?
As someone who is privy to the inside story here, it's rather tragicomic to see otherwise-intelligent people peddle false information and conspiracy theories when actual, real data is out there.
Please read the link mentioned in the summary, http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archives/166329.asp
There's your answer. Sorry, no hackz0rs or clandestine corporate policy changes involved.
Wow.
This is the first time I've seen an honest and thought-provoking post get a nasty downmod stream like that.
I wonder how many gay activists got mod points and went "OMG SOMEONE TOLD THE TRUTH STOP THEM" tonight?
If you can read this sig, congratulations, you have your glasses on!
Homosexuality may be genetic (or hormonal) or it may not be, that isn't the issue of this post
1) During the 80s/early-90s everyone claimed that (a) homosexuality was a personal preference you couldn't question and (b) homosexuality was something you were born with.
Now obviously both of those can't be right, but during the 80s both thoughts/phrases were beyond question. It was rude to doubt the veracity of either of those statements.
And the beauty was that you could whip out either one of those statements in an argument as best suited your needs.
Yes, back then the proscribed DoubleThink was quite open and enforced.
2) We don't know if homosexuality is an innate or inherited condition. ... they don't know why people are homosexual. They have set up their PC answer and it must not be tested or questioned anymore than the Medieval idea that the Sun revolves around the Earth.
You have no proof except your vitriol.
And why do we have no proof? Because the GLBT interests ban/fight any research into the area. Because (they claim) finding such an inheritable gene/hormone marker would allow you to abort gay children. And, then they trot out the old Nazi accusations.
The truth is
Also, it scares the shit out of them that if homosexuality is found to be chemical/biological, we could treat it like depression or diabetes. And we can't have that now can we?
So, ban scientific testing and when their is scientific testing attack the scientist until they (a) recant & shut up and/or (b) spin their results to fit your dogma. Also the scientists should go to "re-education".
So the point of this post is that you have swallowed whole a dogmatic belief with no proof and nothing but faith and anger to guide you.
You can tell how narrow-minded and bigoted you have become in your position by the level of anger you display when that position is questioned.
If you want to belief with your whole heart and soul that homosexuality is genetic, fine.
Just realize that belief rests of faith not proof.
"It's obvious Amazon has some sort of automatic mechanism that marks a book as "adult" after too many people have complained about it. ... So somebody is going around and very deliberately flagging only LGBT(QQI)/feminist/survivor content on Amazon until it is unranked and becomes much more difficult to find. To the outside world, this looks like deliberate censorship on the part of Amazon, since Amazon operates the web application in question.""
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/index.html
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
"a ham-fisted cataloging error."
I was trying to add to my "ham-fisting" book collection on the weekend but all amazon searches came back empty.
Anyone remember the massive public protest against the stupid Spore DRM scheme? If you look up the game on Amazon, you can still see the extremely low rating people are giving it.
Well, a couple of weeks later and Amazon had had enough. Even though the concerns about DRM and Starforce were definitely something consumers would want to know before they bought the product, one day the reviews just dissappeared. The cause? A mysterious glitch! Sound familiar? The publicity from game news sites was so bad they put the reviews back up almost instantly.
Kind of proves that Amazon haven't really learned their lesson about what kind of behaviour will and won't be tolerated by the public. How many gay and lesbian customers is this incident going to lose them, I wonder? Was is worth it to appease whoever paid them to do it?
"If you want a vision of the future, Winston, imagine a boot stamping on a human face forever." - George Orwell, 1984
Why do you hate Mormons so much?
The world you experience is only a close approximation of reality.
If this was completely intentional, it wouldn't be such a big deal. Non-political censorship is a minor matter. It would be terrible news if Amazon was de-ranking liberal or conservative books. But this is a minor issue. Worst case scenario, men will have to go back to jerking off to Sears catalogues. How difficult is it to find "adult content" on the Internet? My guess is that 90% of people trying to buy adult oriented books have a pretty good idea of what they're looking for. They probably have a name or saw something online. Otherwise you might buy something that includes she-male porn. Or does not include she-male porn (I didn't want to leave the Apple guys out).
Gay and lesbian books are a niche market. So are many other things. Dan Brown novels and Harry Potter books appeal to a general audience. Not saying that they're great, just that a wide scope of people buy them. Pregnancy books are an example of a niche market. People who want to find pregnancy books, search for pregnancy books. They are completely irrelevant to other people. The same for deck repair. Most non-gays are not interested in gay material. Joe Hetero-Average or Jane Hetero-Average do not benefit from getting gay book hits on their generic searches. If you want a gay cowboy story, search for "gay cowboy". If you want a book on kitchen repair, search for "sink disaster".
If this wasn't a glitch, it's because the vast majority of the world's population is repulsed by homosexual sex. The same way that the vast majority of the population do not want to see a man and a woman who have a BMI of 50 have sex. The media image of sexy lesbians is pretty much lesbian blackface, they are usually presented as two straight women who are having sex to arouse a man. This does not mean that people want homosexuals imprisoned or punished, the public just doesn't want to watch them "exercise" their freedom. Just as most people do not want to watch a burn victim have sex with someone with a colostomy bag.
As far as sales figures go, I've never understood why people are so likely to follow them. I don't have grey hair and I've known for a long time that sometimes half the people in the country buy drek. Popularity and Quality are independent of each other.
This has been on my mind over the last year, so I'm curious what insight others might have:
I've noticed a growing trend of people replacing the word "bug" with "glitch," in ever increasingly frequency. Anyone else noticed this? I am active in an open source fps (http://sauerbraten.org/), and paying attention to questions and comments by new users has really highlighted this trend. What's the cause in this shift? World of Warcraft? (Don't laugh - a game with that kind of userbase can have an impact, at the scale they operate at).
"Pro-homosexuals" would be more likely to search for "gay" or "lesbian", terms avoided by bigots because of their political connotations of acceptance and empowerment.
"Or is the most obvious and likely scenario true, and Amazon simply got caught implementing a wildly-unpopular new policy without telling anyone?"
I think this is the most likely scenario. It seems that several entities have tried this kind of crap before. Personally I think doing it online is something akin to book-burning. I guess I find such fact-filtering to be censorship the likes of a lie of omission, seeing as many of the books I like would most likely fall out of print due to lack of purchases (which goes up proportionally to the level of exposure a book gets....or lack there of). If you cannot find a book because it doesn't show up in your search results, it might as well not exist.
-Oz
First of all, the poster was brave enough to go against the obvious groupthink. That's worth some "interesting" points, unless you're abusing the moderation system by modding "flamebait" simply to deny eyeballs to a non-groupthink point of view.
Second of all, there are genuine good points within the post. The question of "framing the debate" isn't just involved in the pro/anti-gay debates, it happens in just about every debate. Abortion debaters mark themselves as "pro-choice" or "pro-life" because that tars their opponents as "anti-choice" or "anti-life" by implication. Democrats and Republicans regularly tar each other with all sorts of epithets. PETA seems to switch its nomenclature on a weekly basis, trying to figure out something that doesn't expose them as just a bunch of goat-fuckers. Environmental activists always push themselves as being "pro-environment" or "pro-earth" rather than "anti-" whatever their target of the day is.
The point made by parent, questioning whether the "choice" versus "not a choice" language is a tactic that may or may not have basis in fact, is very valid.
There is considerable debate within the "homosexual community", as well as scientific researchers, on whether homosexuality is innate, a choice, or somewhere in between. We know that there are people who claim to be "only gay", "only straight", and "bi-sexual" (or as some might say jokingly or not, "too horny to care"). We know that there are people who go to incredible lengths to mutilate their bodies in the name of either "beauty" or "identity" - some trying to look like animals, some trying to achieve unrealistic self-imposed beauty standards, some just nutcases, some trying to rewrite their "sexual identity".
It's entirely valid to question the assertion that a group of people, at least some of whom choose (rather than are forced) to be a part of the group, deserve some form of "protected class" consideration.
Because without Macs, there wouldn't be any homosexuals shopping on Amazon at all, and this whole fiasco would've never been discovered.
Obviously, Amazon.com hates gay people. It's typical for those in the arts and literature to be. Everyone knows that the gays are all in the military instead.
Actually, the problem is that "being gay" is really a choice
I have no idea why anyone thinks this matters. The reason that gays are A-OK with me is because they're not hurting anyone by their behavior and frankly, in my experience, even seem to be slightly nicer than the rest of us (on average).
something that society wants to promote and give benefits to (e.g. preferential treatment, tax benefits, etc)
Bzzt. Gays do not get preferential treatment or tax benefits for being gay, nor is anyone suggesting this ought to be done.
any more than someone who makes bad lifestyle choices and becomes obese
Now we've completely jumped the rails. Obesity has a significant inherited component. Go trawl NCBI.
there are a large number of parents that don't want their kids recruited to.
Perhaps you're thinking of Jehovah's Witnesses? (Maybe they have a "gay" branch, I dunno.)
not something the majority of society wants to see promoted.
Shouldn't the question here be whether or not a set of behaviors is harmful to society, rather than what "the majority of society wants to see promoted"?
if homosexuality were not a choice, why are the two most common insults directed at anyone who is against public promotion of homosexuality "well you must be in the closet" and "you must be afraid you'll try it and like it"?
Well, (a) one can be gay and in the closet. Doesn't really matter whether or not being gay is genetic. Duh. As for (b), we saw a study just this month that found that homophobic males are most likely to be turned on by gay porn. So, maybe fear of just that really is a significant component here.
Anyway, please take a deep breath. Gay acceptance isn't going to mean the fall of the republic or endanger the safety of your children. For those we have Neocons and motor vehicles, respectively.
P.S. Yeah, I know you're trolling. It was good for me anyway. ;-)
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
Compare Indian pornography to Japanese, to Chinese, to European, to American, to South American, to African,
Ok, will do. Links please.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
"Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence... but watch your back."
I.e. never confuse for incompetence what may legitimately be malice.
This is probably similar to Jew Watch being the top result on Google for "Jew" - not necessarily the result of a hack or Google policy, but the fact that "Jew" is more often used as an insult than "Jewish" or "Judaism" and the vulnerability of searching/indexing to external influence (e.g. Googlebombing).
That said, I don't think "It was a glitch and we fixed it" is a sufficient response from Amazon for the other allegations. We need to know exactly what happened, how it happened, and how they're going to stop it from happening again. Whether intentional or accidental, the large-scale blacklisting of anything with gay themes in it (unless the gay themes are "how to stop your son becoming a homo") is absolutely disgraceful and Amazon should be boycotted until they give a better explanation for this mess.
Missed a word. Hormones, and by extension, genetics, play a big role...
For some reason, the top search results are predominantly anti-homosexuality. I suspect a hack. I would respect amazon if they'd own up to it.
Why would you expect any different results, when the word "homosexuality" is generally only used by those with an anti-gay agenda?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Clearly someone was tasked with filtering out adult content (gay, lesbian, and bisexual being words that are sure to bring up adult pictures on Google image search) just through together a list of key words they thought of without considering their legitimate uses.
I might be thinking of someone else, but there was a book by a prominent author where anonymous people over the internet kept clicking between his book and gay pornography, to get Amazon to think the two are related.
It's certainly possible that something else happened for whatever reason, or maybe a rogue moderator, yada-yada...
but W is still a jackass...
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
And thus natural selection steps in, the genes the code for homosexuality aren't passed on (pretty much by definition), and the population goes extinct over the course of a few centuries.
Iowa courts issued a ruling and opinion that's at odds with earlier legislation... which the court says is at odds with more fundamental legal issues. That's a far cry from saying the state "could agree on" gay marriage.
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
How likely is it that Amazon was hacked versus the likelihood of an internal Easter weekend glitch? Or is the most obvious and likely scenario true, and Amazon simply got caught implementing a wildly-unpopular new policy without telling anyone?"
It's a question of business, I would think. I don't think a company like Amazon would do something they had reasons to suspect would upset a major section of their customers - to my mind a better question is: did they bow to pressure from conservative groups? Either way, I don't think they have more customers that are Murky Christians than customers who are gay, and I find it hard to believe they would choose to do something that would alienate an important group of customers.
Just for the record, California's supreme court was the first to uphold gay's right to marry. Then California passed a law via a vote to ban gay marriage, and the supreme court found it unconstitutional. Then California passed (by a narrow margin) a constutional ammendment banning gay marriage.
Now it's back to the courts as to whether or not the constitutional ammendment was (ahem) unconstitutional. So Iowa is trailing California by some 20 years or so... the right-wing anti-freedom types are, as I write this, gathering their forces, telling everybody about how the evilbadgays are going to sodomize your children...
Seriously - never underestimate a foe whose strength come from being unreasonable!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
some very clever manipulators, convinced california church going public that
its their place to define what marriage means -- they forgot about separation of church and state
What difference does it make? is it somehow more legal if being homosexual is not a choice?
"In keeping up it's good standing with morality, Amazon is proud to unveil its new adult book ranking policy which will strip out offensive boo- what? You disagree? You think it's censorship? BOYCOTTS?!? Wait, did we say policy? We meant hum.... GLITCH! Yeah, it was a glitch, let's go with that!"
You know, I think the phrase "being in the closet" implicitly implies a state of mind that is a fruit of cultural propaganda. Who is to say that a gay man isn't supposed to just act heterosexual? There's some kind of perception that gay guys need to dress like Mr Slave or they're "in the closet." I know several guys who are gay and you would never know it. I think that's fine. They're really normal people, heterosexuals don't go around flaunting their sexuality, so do they.
// I'm on a never ending quest to save my girlfriend.
/ I'm not gay
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
This just made me realize how much I depend on amazon for product reviews and quick buys. I think I need to diversify my buying habits so I'm not relying on one behemoth for most of my online book and impulse buying needs.
I am guessing that blogspammer not-so-miraculous Miracle Jones has never hear of Hanlon's razor.
I have to wonder why Jones has such a hate-on for Amazon. What did they do to this tin-pot hate-monger to earn his bloviating wrath? Is he just a disciple of Jackson, Sharpton, and the race-baiters?
Is he projecting his own hatred and malice upon others?
Or is he just another petty internet thug spewing hate to cover how ineffectual he is and his own short-comings in real life?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Some pissed off slashdotters and diggers is not a massive public outcry nor does it make something wildly-unpopular.
Seriously, your arrogance is appalling.
does it take to make a post "-1 Insightful"?
The answer: as many gays as have dishonestly downmodded this insightful post.
The most obvious answer is that it was a glitch. Look at the business realities here.
1) It's a global company
2) millions of people look at the gay material.
3) The gay community takes everything as a personal attack
4) Money
From a business standpoint this is going to fail, and be costly.
Could this have been a new Amazon policy? possibly, people can do stupid things. I do find it hard that this would get past any official committee. Hell, it could have been some wacko that thinks his belief justifies anything he does and did it himself, or some disgruntled employee on the way out.
I would be truly surprised if this was a Intentional company policy change.
The best part about this is the logical fallacy, ignorance, and lack of basic logical thinking run rampant through blogspace regarding this issue.
I hate to take the drama away girls, but no, Amazon is not out to get you.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
What is 'society' and who gets to define what benefits it (and in your reasoning, to decide what coercion and deprivation of rights is justified)?
I would say that no one should be in a position to prohibit behaviors unless they are, or could be, overtly harmed by those. And no, knowing that some gay couples somewhere are enjoying the same rights that straight couples take for granted does NOT qualify as 'being overtly harmed'.
Equality of people before the law, in particular with respect to their gender, seems to me a good place to start - and if so, the burden of proof is on you to show that gay marriage is in some way harmful to 'society', whatever that is.
I agree. Any material that doesn't include an attractive person taking the money shot to the face is perverse, and should be labeled as such.
Oh did you have a different definition of perverse?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It means that it's probably incompetence, but there is a chance it isn't,so watch your back.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Jesus Christ.
I've been around queers for ages (I'm from the US West Coast), have plenty of queer friends, etc. but honestly --
-- I've never seen a bunch more damn touchy and ready to scream and howl and caterwaul at every perceived act of "discrimination" (most of which are just the normal bumps in the road of life). Get over yourselves, already.
Jesus Christ.
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
Same with google. You will get two definition sites, and the 3rd one will be a religious site explaining that it is evil.
As we all no, the majority of background buzz of the internet is by people who hate something that is going on. When something really bothers a lot of people, you get spikes.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why does that sound familiar? Oh, yes, now I remember...
"...so we went ahead and fixed the glitch."
"So, Milton has been let go?"
"Just a second there, Professor. We uh, we fixed the glitch. He won't be receiving a paycheck any more, so it will just work itself out."
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
So, when I first saw this headline, I searched for "Thikal" on Amazon and the rather controversial book showed up in the search results. After clicking around a bit, I came across a review for "Practical Methamphetamine Manufacturing" that indicated that the book accidentally showed up in a search for Pryex.
The customer seemed shocked that Amazon would include such a book in a search for a household kitchen item.
No, I will not work for your startup
No
Insanity: voting in the same two parties over and over again and expecting different results