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?"

Comments

Maybe...

[milas]

...it was a glitchy hack?

Re:Maybe...

[fractoid]

It sounds like "technical glitch" is the new get-out-of-jail-free card for any big corporation that makes a bad call and wants to avoid public backlash.

Re:Maybe...

[Ren.Tamek]

Yes, it's Amazons favourite excuse as of late. Remember when DRM and Starforce caused a consumer backlash which generated thousands of negative reviews for Spore? Somehow, they all got lost due to a mysterious glitch too!

Every games news site in town reports the selective censoring... and within hours the mysterious glitch is just as mysteriously solved.

let me ask you, what kind of glitch would cause material whose topics are at odds with conservative Christian values not to show up on the main search engine? Not just gay and lesbian titles, but 'Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica' also. Someone at Amazon has been caught with their pants down i'd say...

Re:Maybe...

[Austerity Empowers]

I don't think if Amazon had intentionally done this, and had announced that they'd one it, that it would be that unpopular. California, of all places, couldn't agree on gay marriage. Imagine then the rest of the country.

On the other hand, since Amazon is a for profit company, they have absolutely no reason to alienate a fraction of their customers by implementing this policy silently. They're not attracting right wing sales, nor "think of the children" types of all mentalities...they'd just be pissing off a segment of the market.

So it seems like it's probably a hack, because if it isn't they'd be being uncharacteristically stupid in the only dimension they'd ever shown any real passion about.

Re:Maybe...

[Dutchmaan]

California, of all places, couldn't agree on gay marriage. Imagine then the rest of the country.

Iowa, of all places, could agree on gay marriage. Imagine then the rest of the country.

Re:Maybe...

[bdenton42]

let me ask you, what kind of glitch would cause material whose topics are at odds with conservative Christian values not to show up on the main search engine?

It very well could be a glitch. At the same time it is likely an intentional filtering system. Other countries that Amazon operates in probably have restrictions that they need to follow. My guess is that they were updating the filter for some country and accidentally messed it up for the US market.

Re:Maybe...

[davolfman]

I think they're using the term glitch to cover "bad idea implemented with a horribly flawed design and worse implementation".

Re:Maybe...

[calmofthestorm]

I don't know, one time I was writing a Huffman compressor for an applied information theory class and I couldn't find this weird bug where it would email racist statements to everyone in your address book every time you tried to compress a file larger to 50kb. Took me several hours to fix, and my solution was under 100 lines of Python.

I can fully sympathize with companies who have to deal with overly sensitive people who think that bugs like this, which emerge quite frequently in sufficiently complex systems, are the result of bad calls or poor intent, rather than the simple technical glitches that they are.

Re:Maybe...

[DrgnDancer]

Ah, but there are more factors. First, Amazon, if they did this on purpose, pissed off more than the LGBT community. Most plenty of people who aren't gay support gay rights. Not all of them are likely to boycott or anything, but some will, and others will file information about what was done away to be added to any other anti-amazon feelings they may have. Second, there's online patterns which suggest that more pro-LGBT types are online than anti-LGBG. Finally there's the question of who buys more books, which again I tend to think would be slanted toward the pro-LGBG crowd. I'm making statements without numbers of course, but I think I am likely correct in most of those statements. Seems to me that if Amazon did this on purpose, they did pissed a demographic that is:

1) More likely to be a customer
2) More likely to be a good customer
3) Very vocal
4) Able to make it's opinions known

to placate a demographic that is:

1) Less likely to be a customer
2) Less likely to be a good customer
3) Very Vocal
4) Able to makes it's opinions known
5) But hadn't really been complaining

Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe Amazon got infiltrated by the radical right while no one was looking, but a glitch seems more likely to me.

Re:Maybe...

[fumblebruschi]

Amazon has an automated feature that tags any book as "adult" if a certain number of people complain about it (using the "report this as inappropriate" button.)

A hacker, apparently as revenge for some delisting on Craigslist for which he blamed gay people, scraped Amazon for books whose metadata tagged them as GBLT, and then mass-reported them as "adult" to get them removed from search rankings. (The details are here: http://pastebin.ca/1390576.)

So it was both a glitch *and* a hack: that is, the glitch was that a hacker could take advantage of an automated feature in this way. The reply sent to Mark Probst -- that Amazon excludes adult material from searches -- was perfectly accurate, and simply sent to him at a time when Amazon had not yet realized that this hack was taking place.

Is it a wildly-unpopular new policy?

[Anonymous Coward]

How do you know?

Re:Is it a wildly-unpopular new policy?

[brucifer]

they know because someone told them it was unpopular. That's how the internet works these days, no need to think!

To avoid this..

[tjstork]

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.

Re:To avoid this..

[larry bagina]

being gay isn't a personal preference, it's genetic.

Re:To avoid this..

[m0nkyman]

I would be just as upset by that as I was by what they did. I'd also be upset if they allowed people to selectively exclude jews, blacks or women. Enabling bigotry isn't something I will support.

Re:To avoid this..

[Nutria]

being gay isn't a personal preference, it's genetic.

Research indicates it more likely to be hormonal.

Re:To avoid this..

[gnick]

Simple solution - A quick prick from a syringe incorporated into your keyboard and they can tell if you're into gay literature. Or whether you're a potential alcoholic and should be banned from the wine-of-the-month-club. Or whether you've damaged your DNA with LSD and should be barred from buying mushroom spores from Seattle.

Why are we so short sighted?

[/sarc]

Seriously though, Amazon is one of 2 companies that makes their claim-to-fame via the Internet that I actually have faith in (I'm an admitted Google fan-boi, in spite of their over-seas policies). They seem pretty willing to sell whatever will fetch a price and do it at reasonable rates. When Fahrenheit 451 and Animal Farm drop off their list, I'll start whining. Until then, I actually believe them. Bitch at Amazon that you can't get what you want - From my experience, they'll find it. They want to sell everything to everyone.

Re:To avoid this..

[sudotron]

*sigh*

Not sure if you were being serious or not, but either way I'm going to respond with my usual rant on the subject because I think it's important: Whether or not being gay is genetic shouldn't matter in the context of any policy whatsoever. It appalls me to no end that people debate about this when the real issue at hand is that adults ought to be able to have consensual sex with whomever they want. What I do in the bedroom is between me and whomever I'm in there with.

Re:To avoid this..

[ScrewMaster]

being gay isn't a personal preference, it's genetic.

If you try to tell some gay people that they're gay because they made a choice, they'll claim it's genetic (thereby forestalling comments about their having made a bad choice.) If you try to tell them it's genetic, they get upset because they think you're saying their brains are defective, and insist they're exercising a personal preference instead. Like arguing religion or politics, it's not an argument that can ever be won.

Me, I have no problem accepting that I'm straight because it's in my genes. Whatever, doesn't really matter: as the Great Popeye once said, "I am what I am, what's all that I am." Sexuality is one of the most fundamental aspects of the human psyche, one that is vitally important to us for most of our lives, no matter what side of the fence we're on. To say it's simply "a choice" is demeaning on the face of it. It's too much a part of who we are.

Eventually, technology is going to make our very genes a matter of personal preference. It will be interesting to see which side the gay community comes down on then, since even if homosexuality really is a strictly hereditary phenomenon, there will truly be a choice. Of course, that will work both ways.

Re:To avoid this..

[MindlessAutomata]

Homosexuality is and isn't a choice. The behavior is a choice, but the actual attraction is not. If I could choose who I was sexually attracted to then I would make myself asexual because like most Slashdot nerds I ain't gettin' any.

Ask yourself a simple question: 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"? The mask slips just a tad too often, showing that the "it's not a choice" propaganda is pure lies.

This is because, or at least because it is perceived to be true, that many gay men in the closet deny their homosexuality for social reasons and to try to hide it or excuse for it or "make up for it" they crusade against homosexuality which they have been brought up to think is wrong. Does Ted Haggard ring a bell...?

Re:To avoid this..

[Walkingshark]

Lets just take it from the top.

First up, you try to back up a claim by linking to a fluff piece interview with an WNBA basketball star. You then talk a bunch of other shit that is essentially just repeating the same assertion over and over again supported with variations of "becuase I said so." Then, you claim that we should make policy on something because you said so.

Your finaly gem is this bit about closeted self hating gays being a common phenomenon:

Ask yourself a simple question: 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"? The mask slips just a tad too often, showing that the "it's not a choice" propaganda is pure lies.

You're saying that because it is a widely observed phenomenon that some of the most anti-gay people are actually gay themselves (Ted Haggard being one of the more recent and spectacular flameouts), this somehow supports your "being gay is a choice" assertion. Again, because you said so.

Look, I know you're not smart enough to understand whats happening here, so I'll spell it out for you:

When people suggest that homophobes are closeted self-loathing gays, it in no way implies that they think that inward sexual orientation is a choice, it means that they are saying that lots of people are gay but that they lie about it.

You know, lies. You might have heard of them. Hell, you're probably lying to yourself right now. About how much you like cock.

Re:To avoid this..

[Walkingshark]

Eventually, technology is going to make our very genes a matter of personal preference. It will be interesting to see which side the gay community comes down on then, since even if homosexuality really is a strictly hereditary phenomenon, there will truly be a choice. Of course, that will work both ways.

If you're making a veiled threat at lesbian porn there is going to be fucking hell to pay.

Re:To avoid this..

[Moryath]

Interesting thought.

Culture influences what you think of as "attractive" as much as anything else. Compare Indian pornography to Japanese, to Chinese, to European, to American, to South American, to African, and compare not only from the 20th/21st century but also go back in history in the various places.

Compare modern Persian culture from Iran (heavily influenced/controlled by Islamic "thought") to the much richer, more vibrant Persian culture prior. You'll find that the Persians were much more open about sexuality and what they considered erotic, and you'll find just as much that the "tastes" have been changed.

Consider the cultural issues that made Westerners have such a weird place when the Japanese first saw them - to a culture where moderately dark skin and hair are the norm, but where the art forms venerated the lightest skin and hair tones as beautiful, to all of a sudden see very pale people and a number of red and gold hair tones among them.

Take the phenomenon of black males in America (as opposed to most African nations) who carry a sexual fetish for paler, light haired women. Amazing amounts of pornography are devoted to this, but only in America. Why is this? Because in America, those women are put forth as the ideal of "beauty", and with very few exceptions, even the successful models of black/african heritage have lighter than normal (for their genotype) skin tone and tend to do things like color their hair, towards either golden tones or golden highlights.

Now, take even a second-generation (child of immigrant parents but born in, or imported before say age 5) individual. What do you find? More likely than not, they do not as a rule share their parents' cultural kinks, either in regard to sexuality or otherwise, unless they've been held in an environment that is very similar to where their parents grew up (for instance, chinese raised in a "chinatown" area, or latino raised in a largely latino neighborhood).

Given the preceding, why is it unfair that parents (whose interest is in seeing their kids marry and produce the next generation) would be worried about their kids being told that homosexuality was "perfectly normal", "acceptable", or something else? You can propagandize impressionable minds into thinking that "sexual attractiveness" is a schoolgirl in a fuku. Or, for that matter, something a little more realistic of most of the population. Why, if homosexuality is "fixed", are pro-gay groups working so hard to get books promoting their lifestyle into kindergartens if not that they're trying to propagandize kids the same way and pick up some numbers?

Re:To avoid this..

[Anonymous Coward]

And the walls, don't forget the walls.

They always watching.

Re:To avoid this..

[wickerprints]

"Homosexuality" is not a behavior, at least no more so than "heterosexuality" is a behavior. It is an intrinsic identification regarding one's sexuality. It is misleading and incorrect to conflate sexual orientation and sexual activity by using the same word to describe both.

Furthermore, being "in the closet" is not a denial of one's homosexuality per se. It is merely the set of actions (or in some cases, lack of action), that lead others to presume that the given individual is heterosexual. Such actions range from simply doing nothing--the assumption is preexisting--to active denial, which is the case you described. There is an entire spectrum in between those extremes that you fail to take into account.

The question of whether homosexuality is a choice is in itself a loaded one, because it assumes that the answer is germane to how GLBTs (i.e. anyone who isn't heterosexual) ought to be treated by society. GLBTs don't present the question of whether heterosexuality is a choice. Neither do the heterosexuals who are so apparently fascinated with the analogous question as it applies to gays. To GLBTs, it is as if society asked, "Is being blue-eyed a choice" as a precursor to determining whether or not blue-eyed individuals should be held to a lower social and legal status than non-blue-eyed individuals.

Therefore, the debate over the nature and origins of homosexuality in humans is, in my view, a deliberate and calculated attempt by homophobes and bigots to manipulate the dialogue about the role of GLBTs in society away from the ways in which we share commonalities and the discrimination we face, and toward the biased, dogmatic thinking that underlies their prejudices about people who are not like themselves. And they have been incredibly successful at this sophistry and perversion of logic, as is witnessed by the asking of the "choice" question nearly every single time a discussion about gay people happens online. The ensuing useless debate is proof and product.

Re:To avoid this..

[mkcmkc]

Whether [...] society has an interest (based on there being more good than harm, overall, to society) in the promotion of homosexual pairings.

Since no one is suggesting that we "promote" homosexual pairings, this question is entirely moot. (No, objecting to discrimination and violence against gays does not count as "promoting" homosexuality. Good grief.)

Re:To avoid this..

[fractoid]

Take the phenomenon of black males in America (as opposed to most African nations) who carry a sexual fetish for paler, light haired women.

Among dark-skinned races, lighter skin is seen as beautiful. I don't know why but I guess it's the counterpart to light-skinned races' fixation on sun tans. I know I found it amusing going from Thailand (where the TV is full of advertising for whitening creams to lighten skin colour) to England (where the TV is full of advertising for Johnsons' Holiday Skin, a popular fake tan). And it's not just dark-skinned women trying to look like white women - I've heard actresses criticised for not looking "asian enough".

As for sexuality being a choice - I challenge you to (assuming you're straight and male, adjust genders as appropriate if not) look up some gay porn and find it arousing. I bet you can't. If you can't 'choose to be gay', then how can you realistically expect others have chosen so, or that they can 'choose to be straight'? Unless you take the absurd position that everyone is intrinsically straight and that every person who claims to be gay is lying, your position is inconsistent.

Given the preceding, why is it unfair that parents (whose interest is in seeing their kids marry and produce the next generation) would be worried about their kids being told that homosexuality was "perfectly normal", "acceptable", or something else?

This is a scary viewpoint. Homosexuality is not "acceptable"? You remind me of a guy I used to work with, who said that gay couples shouldn't be allowed to adopt because "then the kids would grow up thinking it's OK".

Why, if homosexuality is "fixed", are pro-gay groups working so hard to get books promoting their lifestyle into kindergartens if not that they're trying to propagandize kids the same way and pick up some numbers?

Maybe so that those kids are more likely to think "bob likes holding hands with other boys, because he's gay, but he's still a person just like everyone else" rather than "look! it's a faggot, lets kill it!". Tolerance comes more easily with familiarity.

Re:To avoid this..

[dangitman]

Yeah. Thousands of years of romantic poetry is clearly wrong. Nobody is aroused by anything they don't want to be, and every straight guy who's looking at a hot woman must focus and think "getitupgetitupgetitupgetitup oh yeah, she's making me pop a bo... getitupgetitupgetitupgetitup"

So, what about people who are bisexual? I've been attracted to both men and women, and can make a choice at any time to choose either or both. I know plenty of people in a similar position.

I think this debate might be more about sexual repression, and both sides take the argument to extremes. Just as people arguing that it's "just a choice" are likely arguing from a sense of repression and revulsion, those gays who vociferously argue that there's no choice" and it's only genetic are also repressing their lingering doubts about their sexuality. Sexuality is amorphous, it's more of a continuum than a binary decision. There are plenty of "straight" guys who enjoy getting a headjob from another guy, and plenty of "gay" men who fetishize glamourous women.

Re:To avoid this..

[LuNa7ic]

What if filtering options allowed you to hide religious material? Nazi propaganda? Would you still be crying about bigotry? If people want to censor themselves without forcing it on others, it shouldn't be everyone else's concern to jump in and shout them down.

Re:To avoid this..

[m0nkyman]

Yes. I would be equally outraged. On the flip side, I'm not asking for government interference in their business model, just stating that if a fucking book store is going to get into the censoring business, then they don't want *MY* money.

Re:To avoid this..

[wickerprints]

You certainly have a strange concept of "favored status." Name me one right--just ONE--that gay people have, or are seeking, that straight people do not enjoy. Name me one law on the books that says gay people are entitled to some benefit that straight people are legally prohibited from having.

You think that gay marriage is somehow more favorable to gays than straight marriage? That just demonstrates your bias and ignorance.

Re:To avoid this..

[Moryath]

As for sexuality being a choice - I challenge you to (assuming you're straight and male, adjust genders as appropriate if not) look up some gay porn and find it arousing.

Here's an experiment for you - find some random object/picture and stare at it while jacking off. Do that enough times, and you'll start to get horny when you see the object. It's a conditioned response involving brain chemistry and hormones. See also: Pavlov.

Homosexuality is not "acceptable"?

A viewpoint held by a large number of people in society, is that homosexuality is not a good lifestyle choice.

You remind me of a guy I used to work with, who said that gay couples shouldn't be allowed to adopt because "then the kids would grow up thinking it's OK".

Hmm. There are a number of disqualifying criteria for adoption, in various states. For example, if someone's primary occupation is as the owner of a strip club or as an exotic dancer, they're likely to be rejected. Some states only look for married couples to adopt. If someone has a history of being a gang member, I'd probably rather they not adopt because they have a higher likelihood of teaching the kid that gang membership and associated behavior (drug use, crimes, etc) is ok. Again, if someone's position is that homosexuality is not something society has vested interest in promoting, then the question of handing kids off to gays (as single or pair) is somewhat dicey is it not?

This is a scary viewpoint.

Have you ever considered that it is possible to examine a subject dispassionately, and put yourself in the other person's shoes to see things from their perspective, rather than having to attack anyone who disagrees with you and call them names or insult them?

Here's a not-so-subtle hint: if you approach people who disagree with you by calling them names, dropping epithets like "scary" and dismissing their viewpoint out of hand, they are quite likely to treat you in the same manner.

Maybe so that those kids are more likely to think "bob likes holding hands with other boys, because he's gay, but he's still a person just like everyone else" rather than "look! it's a faggot, lets kill it!"

Interesting. Where would a kid have learned the phrase "faggot"? For that matter, there are plenty of grade-schoolers (or younger or older) who hold hands. At that age, the gender differences between kids, left to their own devices, pretty much boil down to "boys can write their name in the snow in pee, and girls can't." Until puberty or later pre-pubsecence, the rest of any "gender preferences" in terms of toys/games/recreation seem to be the result of cultural expectations enforced implicitly or explicitly by the surrounding adults (example: the women wear dresses, therefore the girls want to wear dresses), rather than anything hard-wired.

It sounds more to me like the problem is in exposing the youngest minds to sexual propaganda in general, including the pro-gay stuff.

Re:To avoid this..

[mkcmkc]

I object to violence against anyone, as a general rule. I don't see where it makes a difference as to the skin color, gender, or any other component of the person on the receiving end of the violence.

Good, I'm glad to hear it. If you think about it a while, you'll probably realize that some of the worst situations gays have to endure right now don't involve physical violence per se, but just something more like abominable stupidity and pettiness. Consider the 25-year couple, one dying of cancer, who cannot even assume that they'll be able to be in the same room when death comes. That's where we're at today in the US, and if we want things to improve, we need to make it clear that when religion and bigotry oppose basic human decency, the latter should win out.

Re:To avoid this..

[TrekkieGod]

Interesting thought.

Culture influences what you think of as "attractive" as much as anything else...Given the preceding, why is it unfair that parents (whose interest is in seeing their kids marry and produce the next generation) would be worried about their kids being told that homosexuality was "perfectly normal", "acceptable", or something else?

There's a major flaw in your theory:

I'm a male, and I have been since childhood constantly bombarded with cultural ideals of beautiful women. As a result, for the most part, I tend to agree with other males that are part of the same culture as to what constitutes a beautiful woman. Similarly, females have been since childhood constantly bombarded with cultural ideals for beautiful men. Thus, they tend to somewhat agree on what constitutes an attractive male.

Here's the catch. As a male, I have seen the same "cultural propaganda" as the females around me. However, when I see the culturally accepted attractive male, I don't become aroused. There's a simple reason for that: I'm not gay. It's a similar situation for women. They can recognize a culturally accepted beautiful woman when they see her, but the heterosexual ones don't become aroused. Instead, they try to emulate her. For the homosexual population a similar situation exists, except that they are only aroused by the same gender instead of the opposite one: even though they were exposed to the exact same culture you and I were exposed to.

Sure, culture influences attractiveness, but there are obviously limits.

Why, if homosexuality is "fixed", are pro-gay groups working so hard to get books promoting their lifestyle into kindergartens if not that they're trying to propagandize kids the same way and pick up some numbers?

I can think of two very obvious reasons, both much more likely than your conspiracy theory (especially since I can't think of any reason why a homosexual person would have a need or desire to ensure the existence of homosexuals in the next generation...it certainly doesn't help their dating pool, so why the hell would they care?):

The first is that it sucks being discriminated against, and it's much easier to prevent bigoted behavior if you properly educate your child. It's basically the same reason why people of older generations are more likely to be racists. They were born in a world where that was the way things were, and it's difficult to change your ways.

The second is that it will prevent confusion if kids know how to behave around the child with "two fathers" or "two mothers." It's unfair for such a child to be ostracized for something they have no control over.

Re:To avoid this..

[The_mad_linguist]

>I chose to be white. Yep, you heard correctly.
>Me being white is a choice. Stand up oppressed minorities! You too can choose white.

Micheal Jackson, is that you?

Re:To avoid this..

[Man On Pink Corner]

That's not what is being discussed. The question is, in context of the legal arguments taking place in places such as California currently, whether it is to society's best interest to extend tax and other benefits to gay pairings.

Civil rights do not accrue to "society." They accrue to individuals, and they are not subject to popular consensus.

Separate is not equal. This argument happened before, and just as in that case, there are people who are clearly on the right side of it, and people who are clearly on the wrong side.

Re:To avoid this..

[Gerzel]

The thing is that it doesn't matter.

If someone is born gay then they are gay by birth and it isn't really a choice and you have no right to punish them or infringe upon their rights and freedoms for it for it.

If a person is not born gay then it is a choice and guess what it is their choice to make and you have no right to punish them or infringe upon their rights and freedoms for it for it.

In any case this is probably a case of Amazon trying to silence one loud and outraged part of their clientelle without another part noticing. The other part noticed and was louder. The fact that the other part also had justice on their side is incidental. Amazon can be bigoted to a certain extent if they wish at least until they lose business for it.

Re:To avoid this..

[Anonymous Coward]

Why, if homosexuality is "fixed", are pro-gay groups working so hard to get books promoting their lifestyle into kindergartens if not that they're trying to propagandize kids the same way and pick up some numbers?

Being gay and realizing it are very different things. I get that you probably don't realize it (you seem to be a little confused), because it's not something you've had to face. I have.

When I was young, all I was exposed to were heterosexual relationships. For a long time, it was all I thought could happen; hell, I remember not evening knowing what 'gay' and 'homosexual' actually meant. That didn't stop me and my peers from using those words as insults, of course. So, naturally, the early development of my sexuality was toward being heterosexual. Later, I learned about gay people a little. As a result of all of the negative stigma that I had learned before, and was still being exposed to, I was terrified (without quite recognizing my feelings as such) that I might be gay; I refused to consider it; I tried to crop the guys out of the porn I surreptitiously downloaded. I was a homophobe in the very literal sense of the word. It wasn't until high school that I actually got a better concept of what being gay was like and shook off some of my fear of being judged by people. Over the course of a year or more, I wrestled with my sexuality until I finally realized that I was gay.

I'm not the best storyteller, but hopefully I've managed to convey a bit of how long and confusing that process was for me. Looking back, I realize I was gay the whole time, I just alternately didn't understand that and refused to consider it. If my upbringing had included more exposure to the idea of gay relationships and the fact that it's okay to be gay, I think that I would have been spared a lot of stress and confusion. And I think that exposing kids now to the idea of gay people will save the gay ones a lot of trouble too, and hopefully teach the straight ones a little tolerance. It's not going to 'turn' any straight kids into gay ones; that's just not how sexual orientation generally works.

I think you've really got the wrong idea about that sort of thing, and I'd be happy to address any specific conceptions you have about homosexuality. I can only speak from my own experience, but that's more than 90% of the population is able to do.

(Side note: my CAPTCHA is 'mating.' How does Slashdot get these things so eerily on-topic?)

Re:To avoid this..

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Here's an experiment for you - find some random object/picture and stare at it while jacking off. Do that enough times, and you'll start to get horny when you see the object. It's a conditioned response involving brain chemistry and hormones. See also: Pavlov.

You really believe that? Sounds like the kind of thing they teach "confused" kids at those camps where they try to "cure" them of them being gay. If we just make them all jerk off to pictures of the opposite sex, they will turn straight!

I think most people who try what you suggest will just end up not getting off until they either tune out what they are looking at our find something more arousing to look at.

Have you ever considered that it is possible to examine a subject dispassionately, and put yourself in the other person's shoes to see things from their perspective, rather than having to attack anyone who disagrees with you and call them names or insult them?

Don't kid yourself. You can insult someone by calling them names and you can insult someone by acting like they are those names. Just because you aren't doing the former doesn't mean you aren't doing the latter. In my experience, it is almost universal that people who act like someone is stupid get all riled up when they are called stupid in return. It is a false piety.

Re:To avoid this..

[Miseph]

"The main thrust of the pro-gay crusade these days is about gaining favored status ("protected class" listings, tax benefits for "civil unions" and "gay marriage") for gays. At very least, the second half of that qualifies as promotion."

"Protected class" listings implying a favored status I can see... but how is requesting the ability to do something readily available and commonplace for other demographics somehow something that only a "favored class" can do? I see the denial of people the ability to marry on something over which they have no reasonable control (in this case, their biological sex) as putting them into a disfavored class, and our society has reached an overwhelming consensus that disfavored classes are categorically unacceptable (though this is not, in practice, consistently applied).

The main thrust of the anti-gay crusade these days is to demonstrate that homosexuals are inherently dangerous and subversive, that they are frightening, that they harm children, and that this is all a willful act of contrition against the right-minded and morally superior heterosexual Christian majority (obviously I only say this in reference to "the West", and whatever claims might be made to the contrary, the charge here is led by fundamentalist Christians).

In response to some of your other points... whether or not it is culturally acquired, it's still not a conscious choice, and by our normal standards that makes it akin to genetic fact.

There are relatively few people who honestly believe that homosexuality is a matter of pure choice, most at least concede that it is beyond anyone's immediate control (and therefore not what we normally consider "choice") whom or what they find attractive even if they assert (correctly, although it tends not to mean much once that is conceded) that acting on it is. Obviously there are people out there who believe in complete choice on this, but they are really a fringe minority.

The first question is irrelevant, because the second question can only be logically answered as "false". The fact that people answer otherwise just demonstrates that sometimes people make irrational and illogical choices, not that there is any validity to their argument. If an action causes no harm, then it is simply irrelevant why it is taken.

I leave you with one last point: if a racist asks us to consider their views and respect their wants, we do not do so because we feel they are categorically wrong; if a religious bigot demands that we honor his religious views by suppressing all others, we do not do so because they are categorically wrong; if any whackjob with an ax to grind demands that we take some sort of action that is repulsive to our nature and society, we deny them because we feel they are categorically wrong. What honestly differentiates a homophobe (or anti-gay activist, if you prefer)? On what grounds are we obligated to respect and accede to their views and demands if we believe that they too are categorically wrong?

Re:To avoid this..

[Maxo-Texas]

Bingo.

Sexuality ranges from 100% opposite sex attraction to 100% same sex attraction to 100% dominant to 100% submissive to 100% yada yada yada (race, boobs, ass, red head, blonde, fat, thin). There are many, many axis which sexuality turns on and each of them varies from 0% to 100%. If you are only lightly attracted to the same sex or only attracted to the same sex under particular circumstances, then it can be a choice under certain circumstances. One of the most comfortably gay guys I ever knew (from a painting class I took with him) was married for 8 years and had a couple kids. Clearly, he wasn't gay but was bisexual- but it was a lot simpler for him to just be one or the other socially.

Society doesn't tend to support bisexuality very well unless you are a hot female.

and for what it is worth, the policy seems a bit extreme for Amazon to have gone to without warning. It really puts their position as a neutral retailer in jeopardy. Christians, hindus, gays, straights, etc. could all buy books from Amazon as long as they are not politicized-- it's just a question availability and inexpensive price.

My problem with Amazon, Walmart, and many other similar stores is that ultimately they are bad for me as a consumer.
I get better prices on 80% of the merchandise-- and the other 20% of merchandise I lose the ability to purchase at all.
The small pet store with the barley dog food goes out of business- but pedigree is $1.00 instead of $1.10 at Walmart.

Ultimately, we as consumers are slitting our own throats by buying from the Amazons and Walmarts. The little stores need that extra dime in order to keep providing the specialty products the big stores will not offer. In some cases, you go from 10 to 15 (or more) different varieties of a product to *three*. All the diverse products were profitable- but the three were the most profitable.

Re:To avoid this..

[fractoid]

Here's an experiment for you - find some random object/picture and stare at it while jacking off. Do that enough times, and you'll start to get horny when you see the object. It's a conditioned response involving brain chemistry and hormones. See also: Pavlov.

Here's an experiment for you - try doing exactly what I said before. Go watch gay porn and see if it excites you. I'm pretty sure it won't. Given that people have (unsuccessfully) tried all sorts of things from electro-shock therapy to hypnosis to 'cure' homosexuality, I'd be very surprised if simple classical conditioning is able to change sexual orientation.

Again, if someone's position is that homosexuality is not something society has vested interest in promoting, then the question of handing kids off to gays (as single or pair) is somewhat dicey is it not?

The question is whether your unfounded assertion that "homosexuality is against society's interests" is either correct or helpful to society as a whole.

Here's a not-so-subtle hint: if you approach people who disagree with you by calling them names, dropping epithets like "scary" and dismissing their viewpoint out of hand, they are quite likely to treat you in the same manner.

I was addressing your viewpoint as scary, not your person. You're quite welcome to treat my viewpoint (that tolerance is generally good for a free society) similarly if you wish. If you re-read my post, you'll see that I was disagreeing with you, not attacking you.

Until puberty or later pre-pubsecence, the rest of any "gender preferences" in terms of toys/games/recreation seem to be the result of cultural expectations enforced implicitly or explicitly by the surrounding adults (example: the women wear dresses, therefore the girls want to wear dresses), rather than anything hard-wired.

You're asserting that social cultural elements like style of dress or choice of toys, are determined in exactly the same way that sexual preference is determined? That's a pretty big call.

Re:To avoid this..

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

The questions being asked are pretty similar, actually. Should a person be allowed to marry (and enjoy the related benefits thereof) the person he/she loves regardless of [skin color|gender]?

One of the handful of countries to legalize gay marriage is South Africa. Most african cultures have as much machismo as any other (for example polygamy is fairly common throughout the continent, even in non-muslim areas). Yet SA is the only non-western and non 1st-world country to legalize gay marriage. Maybe it is a coincidence. Or maybe it is because their experience with overcoming apartheid has made the people there especially cognizant of civil rights and that they do see sexual discrimination as the same as ethnic discrimination.

Re:To avoid this..

[residue]

Here's an experiment for you - find some random object/picture and stare at it while jacking off. Do that enough times, and you'll start to get horny when you see the object. It's a conditioned response involving brain chemistry and hormones. See also: Pavlov.

Actually, quite the opposite happens with me. When I jack off looking at one thing, after a few times, I no longer find it erotic. I'm willing to bet it's the same with you.

Like it or not, we do have natural inclinations when it comes to sexual attraction. I've known a lot of gay people, on account of my sister being a lesbian, and there really are as many different varieties of sexual identity as there are people. But in no way is it ever a conscious choice who you are attracted to. Many of the people I know curse their fate for making them what is seen as unacceptable in the eyes of society. That's why growing up knowing that "it's OK" is very important.

Re:To avoid this..

[residue]

why is it unfair that parents (whose interest is in seeing their kids marry and produce the next generation) would be worried about their kids being told that homosexuality was "perfectly normal", "acceptable", or something else?

Because parents' interest is usually not in seeing their kids "produce the next generation" - but in seeing their kids live happy lives! Sure, they want grandkids, but not ones raised in a family with an unhappy parent who lives a concocted life that doesn't represent his/her natural desires!

Re:To avoid this..

[ciderVisor]

I'm not the best storyteller, but hopefully I've managed to convey a bit of how long and confusing that process was for me.

On the contrary, that was very articulate and informative. Bravo, sir !

Re:To avoid this..

[geschild]

"[...] why is it unfair that parents (whose interest is in seeing their kids marry and produce the next generation) would be worried about their kids being told that homosexuality was "perfectly normal"[...]"

One would hope, perhaps unrealisticly, that the interest of these parents would be for their children to be happy instead of being 'as much as the rest of the population as possible so as to not stand out.' Especially in a place like /. where abberation from the norm is probably the norm, I think your point of view is odd :).

I see no reason why gay parents are worse than straight parents and I personally know children being raised by gay people around me. These kids aren't gay themselves and the role-model doesn't seem to influence that 'position' in the least. If having grand-children (even with their own DNA) is the biggest interest parents have, their children being gay does not have to stand in the way so that argument is out the window. The argument that gay parenting or 'gay propaganda' begets gay children is unfounded(*) and sounds much like arguments brought forward by racists against mixed-race mariages or TV shows showing such mixed race bonds. Oh. Wait. Isn't that one of the last big taboos on US TV? :D.

To answer your final question

"Why, if homosexuality is "fixed", are pro-gay groups working so hard to get books promoting their lifestyle into kindergartens if not that they're trying to propagandize kids the same way and pick up some numbers?"

perhaps superfluously: for the same reason the best way to beat racim is for children of different races to play together so that when they grow up, differences in color of skin and other racial characteristics are a natural thing to them. It doesn't turn someone from one race to another (with the odd exception, here and there ;), but it makes these "impressionable minds" accept more easily that there is more than one way to do things so they won't discriminate against those who are different. Perhaps nerds and geeks should start such propaganda in pre-schools as well... :P

(*)If you know of independant, verifyible scientific studies that support the 'gay surroundings turn you gay' idea, please point them out so I can read up.

Re:To avoid this..

[Dr. Manhattan]

A viewpoint held by a large number of people in society, is that homosexuality is not a good lifestyle choice.

A whole lot of people think that the Earth is 6,000 years old, or that Obama's not like all the other politicians. The question is, are the people correct or not?

Looking at things from an evolutionary perspective, repressing homosexuality is the worst possible thing to do if it's biologically-based. Assume it's maladaptive - that there's something wrong with it in some objective sense that has real-world consequences that outweigh any possible advantages. (Sickle-cell anemia has bad consequences if you have two genes for it, but if you only have one copy, it helps protect you from malaria. Go look up what populations have a prevalence of sickle-cell, and whether malaria was common where they originated. Go ahead, I'll wait.)

If homosexuality really is bad, then it will evolve away after a while. Any effort to force homosexuals to breed will just preserve the 'bad' genes longer. (Even if it's only neutral, it'll most likely go away just through genetic drift). So laws against homosexuality are a bad idea in direct proportion to how bad you assume homosexuality is.

But if we assume the converse, that homosexuality is objectively neutral - or perhaps even has net advantages for the population that contains it - then laws against homosexuality are also obviously a bad idea.

If it's not biologically-based - and I can't see how anyone could really argue this, if sex and sexual orientation don't have a biological basis, then what the hell does? - then it's something that consenting adults choose to do. As long as nobody's being hurt involuntarily, what possible (non-religious) justification could a law against homosexuality possibly have in that case?

So, no matter what position you take on the subject, laws against homosexuality are stupid.

Re:To avoid this..

[OhPlz]

Why do you get to choose what my world view should be? What you're implying is that you want to force content onto people that are otherwise uninterested. Spam it in their faces, knowing full well that it's not what they're looking for. That doesn't open someone's world view, that annoys them. That attitude alienates people even more.

School is slightly different in that their purpose is to educate. If someone is looking for books for entertainment, they should be able to filter in on things that they find entertaining. It's common sense. No one would suggest that Playboy run commercials on PBS to open that audience's world view. To me, that's the type of situation that Amazon was trying to fix (albeit in a rather poor way).

Re:To avoid this..

[mdwh2]

So, what about people who are bisexual? I've been attracted to both men and women, and can make a choice at any time to choose either or both. I know plenty of people in a similar position.

Indeed, this is an example where it really is a choice. But note, you're not choosing who you're attracted to - you're still attracted to both and that you didn't choose. You instead make a choice about what relationships to have and so on.

Is it really a choice in that sense for everyone? That's not my experience of many people, who insist that they don't have any attractions towards the same sex. When the typical homophobic person claims it's "a choice", is he really saying "Yes actually I'm attracted towards men too, but I just choose not to do anything with them"?

(I agree that sexuality seems to be a continuum, but there still seem to be people who are over towards one end of the spectrum - and more to the point, they didn't choose their location on this continuum. Sexuality is about who we're attracted to - i.e., where we are on this continuum - and not about which choices we make.)

Re:To avoid this..

[rhakka]

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/118/1/349 provides an in depth study. that took all of two minutes to find via google, if the hordes of anecdotal reports over time have not been high in your conciousness.

Scroll about halfway down to the PSYCHOSOCIAL CHARACTERISTICS OF GAY AND LESBIAN PARENTS AND THEIR CHILDREN section, and you'll find that children raised in such contexts are normal, normal, normal across the board. they quote study after study after study looking for problems and finding none, none, none and none.

Alll that fuss

[actionbastard]

Over a few extra 'esses'.

I don't think "hack" is the right word

[taustin]

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.

Re:I don't think "hack" is the right word

[Hal_Porter]

This seems like a hack to me, assuming it's true of course.

http://pastebin.ca/1390576

Oh hey Owen Thomas! How you doin?

Hay dude. Amazon removed its customer-based reporting of adult books yesterday. I guess my game is up! Here's a nice piece I like to call "how to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code".

I really hate reputation systems based on user input. This started a while back on Craigslist, when I was trying to score chicks to do heroin with. My listings like "looking to get tarred and pleasured" and "Searching for a heroine to do the paronym of this sentence's lexical subject" kept getting flagged. The audacity of the San Francisco gay community disgusted me. They would flag my ads down but searching craigslist for "pnp" or "tina" reveals tons of hairy dudes searching for other hairy dudes to do meth with. So I decided to get them back, and cause a few hundred thousand queers some outrage.

I'm logged into Amazon at the time and see it has a "report as inappropriate" feature at the bottom of a page. I do a quick test on a few sets of gay books. I see that I can get them removed from search rankings with an insignificant number of votes.

I do this for a while, but never really get off my ass to scale it until recently.

So I script some quick bash.
#!/bin/bash
let count = 1
while true; do
links -dump 'http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=0/?ie=ASCII&rs=1000&keywords=Gay_and_Lesbian&rh=n%3A!1000%2Ci%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3AHomosexuality&page='`echo $count`|grep \/dp\/ >> /tmp/amazon
((count++))
done

There's some quick code to grab all the Gay and Lesbian metadata-tagged books on amazon. Then I pull out all the IDs of the given books from those URLs:

cat /tmp/amazon |sed s/.*dp\\/// |sed s/\\/ref.*//

and I have a neat little list of the internal product ID of every fag book on Amazon.

Now from here it was a matter of getting a lot of people to vote for the books. The thing about the adult reporting function of Amazon was that it was vulnerable to something called "Cross-site request forgery'. This means if I referred someone to the URL of the successful complaint, it would register as a complaint if they were logged in. So now it is a numbers game.

I know some people who run some extremely high traffic (Alexa top 1000) websites. I show them my idea, and we all agree that it is pretty funny. They put an invisible iframe in their websites to refer people to the complaint URLs which caused huge numbers of visitors to report gay and lesbian items as inappropriate without their knowledge.

I also hired third worlders to register accounts for me en masse. If you ever need a service like that, you can find them in a post like this advertising in the comments:
http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20070427/solving-captchas-for-cash/

Then they would log into the accounts, save the cookies in a cookie file and send it to me.

Then I used the cookie files like so to automated-report all the books:

for i in `cat /tmp/amazon |sed s/.*dp\\/// |sed s/\\/ref.*//`; do lynx -cookie_file=/home/avex/cookie1 http://www.amazon.com/ri/product-listing/`echo $i`/;done

The combination of these two actions resulted in a mass delisting of queer books being delisted from the rankings at Amazon.

I guess my game is up, but 300+ hits on google news for amazon gay and outrage across the blogosphere ain't so bad.

The only person to figure it out was dely from Six Apart:

http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html

but he has been ground zero at my work, cleaning up my messes before.

So just letting you know the chain of events. if you choose to report on this, please don't disclose my identity/email address. Thanks!

Has to have been intentional

[drinkypoo]

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."

Re:Has to have been intentional

[moosesocks]

Seems a bit paranoid.

In the end, Amazon listened to their customers, and reversed an unpopular policy very quickly. If anything, this is good news.

It's blatantly not in Amazon's best interest to censor anything. The more variety and volume they sell, the larger the profit.

Re:Has to have been intentional

[AnonymityCowardily]

That assumes Amazon is solely after money, and not, you know, morals.

Re:Has to have been intentional

[moosesocks]

In the end, Amazon listened to their customers, and reversed an unpopular policy very quickly. If anything, this is good news.

I don't know--it reminds me of the veloco-raptors in Jurassic Park methodically testing their electrified cage for things they can get away with...

You can bet this kind of "censorship" will happen much more slowly and gradually next time, so people don't notice.

In that case, we should be vigilant, not paranoid.

It's simply unhealthy to implicitly distrust (and loathe) every corporate and governmental entity on the planet.

Yes, it is important to make sure that abuses don't occur. However, going into hysterics over an isolated incident that was quickly corrected seems to be incredibly unhealthy; society needs at least a modicum of trust in order to function.

Re:Has to have been intentional

[drinkypoo]

It's simply unhealthy to implicitly distrust (and loathe) every corporate and governmental entity on the planet.

NO. WRONG. WRONG WRONG WRONG. SPIT OUT THE KOOL-AID.

It's kind of silly to loathe by default, but defaulting to trust is just ignorant.

The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and if you don't think that preventing major retailers from discriminating by default is part of that vigilance, you don't understand the problem.

I do not loathe Amazon, and intend to continue purchasing things from them, but this is a serious issue and I would both loathe them and avoid purchasing from them if they had not undone this.

However, going into hysterics over an isolated incident that was quickly corrected seems to be incredibly unhealthy;

The incident was quickly corrected because many went into "hysterics" -- or, as I like to put it, expressed a valid concern.

society needs at least a modicum of trust in order to function.

Yes, that is true. But that trust does not extend to trusting that a company has my best interests in mind. Instead, I trust that they will serve their own interests. The problem lies in when they don't understand when their interests and the customer's are aligned, which obviously was a problem here. In fact, I really don't trust Amazon or any other web retailer very much at all. Experience has taught me not to. Instead, I have some trust for my credit card company. I had some trust for my bank, but they rejected a chargeback where I had been defrauded. I changed banks. I could have just trusted that they knew better than I do.

In short, you are a fool if you default to trusting corporations or indeed businesses of any size. In fact when you buy from a web retailer you are trusting your credit card company to handle chargebacks for you if the transaction goes awry, because you know that getting any kind of satisfaction through the court system on an out-of-area retailer is nigh-impossible. When you buy from a local retailer you don't know, you have faith in the court system; still not in that retailer. That, or you have completely failed to understand one of the basic tenets of security: mistrust by default.

An insider ?

[Davemania]

Or maybe it was done by a rogue employee with an agenda ?

type 'homosexuality' into the amazon search bar.

[Roxxxadelic]

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.

Interesting...

[Bones3D_mac]

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...)

Re:Interesting...

[IonOtter]

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.

No, this was a major wake-up call as to just how much havoc less than 140 characters can wreak upon a keystone business in less than 24 hours.

Breaking news...

[Miracle Jones]

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."

The one time I try to RTFA...

[brainfsck]

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.

Re:Wildly unpopular?

[Hordeking]

Fact: 99% of quoted statistics are 150% bullshit.

who is misrepresenting the truth

[fermion]

In the previous /. post, this blog entry was given as evidence that Amazon is evil.

Within this blog entry the following assertion was made:

So, because Probst is a publisher and has an Amazon Advantage account, he sent Amazon a letter saying "whafa" and he got this in response:

"In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,

Ashlyn D

Member Services

Amazon.com Advantage"

So! Probst was wrong! He WAS being persecuted!

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.

Re:who is misrepresenting the truth

[cduffy]

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?

No, it does not beg several questions, it raises them. Beggaring a question is a completely different thing. [end pedantry]

The quote from the customer service person was probably correct, inasmuch as the relevant content was inadvertently flagged as pornographic due to, as Amazon puts it, a ham-fisted cataloging error -- allegedly by Amazon's French office. I doubt that the customer service type exercised enough initiative to determine whether the flag was set correctly.

The exclusion of pornographic content was a new, intentional policy. The classification of sexual but non-pornographic content was an error.

Napoleon (not Dynamite) said it best...

[Nutria]

ham-fisted cataloging error

"Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by incompetence."

Griefers.

[w0mprat]

I like this analysis from Charles Stross:

"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

Amazon have done this before

[Ren.Tamek]

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?

Re:Amazon have done this before

[seebs]

Amazon are habitual liars. Why would you believe anything they say that you can't verify independently?

Was this such a bad glitch?

[Glass Goldfish]

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.

When did "bug" become "glitch" ?

[6350']

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).

Re:type 'homosexuality' into the amazon search bar

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Amazon back-pedalling

[Ozlanthos]

"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

Re:Wow. Gay Mods Much?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Your post was about as thought-provoking as a jar of mayo is. No seriously, your entire post was just a thinly-veiled attack on anything that suited your fancy. Kudos, you even managed to get a shot at Islam in there. You posted no truth, fact, or science to back up your assertions that being gay is a lifestyle choice and that there is a secret legion of pro-homosexuals who are scheming to get protected class for various nefarious reasons.

Actually, the problem is that "being gay" is really a choicereally a choice [gay.com], but only a few ultra-honest gays will actually admit that.

So you first start out by quoting a gay WNBA star, who claims that her homosexuality was a choice FOR HER. She says, from the article:

I think there are a lot of people -- gays and lesbians -- who believe you are born that way. I think there also a lot of people who believe it's a choice. And, for me, I believe it was a choice.

You clutch onto this as if it were gospel, as indicated by your following sentence:

Whether that choice is something that society wants to promote and give benefits to (e.g. preferential treatment, tax benefits, etc) is a matter of serious debate in the US and in Europe, not so much in other countries around the world (for instance, go to a Muslim country and you're likely to be thrown in jail just for discussing it in public).

So that's a SERIOUS leap in logic - you quoted one gay woman who says it was her own choice, and imply that it's a choice for everyone without any scientific research. With your next paragraph, your agenda shows:

Pro-homosexuality advocates want to claim it's not a choice. They want to claim it's "inherent" because if it is, then they can claim to be a "protected class." If it's a choice, then they don't get to be a protected class any more than someone who makes bad lifestyle choices and becomes obese.

So do you have any "pro-homosexuality" memos where members are scheming to get a protected class for something that may or may not be genetic / choice?

Oh, and this gem:

Since it is a choice, there are a large number of parents that don't want their kids recruited to. They don't want their kids told at school "this is an acceptable choice" any more than they'd be okay with their kids being told that being a drug user is an acceptable choice, or being a homeless drunk bum is an "acceptable lifestyle choice", or any other of a thousand things that are "lifestyle choices" that are not very good and not something the majority of society wants to see promoted.

JOY, you also manage to squeeze in a little "ThinkOfTheChildren" in your post. I don't recall how being a homeless drunk bum or drug user was a lifestyle choice. To compare homosexuality to a homeless drunk bum or drug user is pretty downright inflammatory.

And these people have as much right as any other Amazon user to complain when they see what they view as inappropriate material being promoted.

Again, if you're just thinking about the children, then perhaps the parents should be taking responsibility and discussing these issues online with their children. If they want their children to believe that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice, then they should talk to them about it, rather than forming a mob to dismiss the material that they don't feel is appropriate.

Ask yourself a simple question: 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"? The mask slips

Did some gay drop you on your head?

[mkcmkc]

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. ;-)

Good scientific experiment.

[TiggertheMad]

Compare Indian pornography to Japanese, to Chinese, to European, to American, to South American, to African,

Ok, will do. Links please.

Re:Good scientific experiment.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

I'm sure you're smart enough to use google.

Your lack of a sense of humour is funny. Not hahah funny, but revealingly funny.

Your response shows that you both:
(a) Didn't get the joke and
(b) Were so put out by it that you could not let it pass without the equivalent of a tin-pot authoritarian's "shut the fuck up."

In my opinion, it shows that you aren't really being objective in your analysis. That all of your "dispassionate" prose is really just a rationalization of your bias cloaked in the form of false empathy and insincere objectivity. If you weren't so tightly wound on the subject you wouldn't have felt the need to post such a transparent and futile defence against a perceived attack, especially one that wasn't even a criticism at all.

In other words, people don't even need to read you original post and go to the effort of applying any tests of the logic therein - your one line misdirected response to that joke reveals exactly where you are coming from in a much more succinct and direct fashion.

On the bright side, at least you can claim to have been a real "straight man."

A) That was Heinlein

[Theaetetus]

and B) everyone always misquotes Hanlon's Razor:

"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.

Re:Sigh

[HobophobE]

[...] tragicomic to see otherwise-intelligent people peddle false information and conspiracy theories when actual, real data is out there.

It's also tragicomic to see an otherwise-intelligent company not get ahead of a problem like this from a PR standpoint.

I can accept that it was a technical mistake and not a policy change or a gaming or breach of their systems. But it's very hard to accept that they wouldn't immediately cop to the problem and give an explanation. Other sites take pains to inform their users of technical difficulties and disabled features.

At the very least there should be a window of time after a title has been de-listed from sales rank that it includes a notice explaining that has happened. It's very difficult to trust a system that may change arbitrarily at a moment's (lack of) notice.

Re:I would suggest mods give this a boost.

[BrokenHalo]

First of all, the poster was brave enough to go against the obvious groupthink.

And on another day, we might see a larger contingent of Slashdot rednecks debating this. However, you're right about the "interesting" points.

"Abortion debaters mark themselves as "pro-choice" or "pro-life" because that tars their opponents as "anti-choice" or "anti-life" by implication.

Well, to the limited extent that they are meaningful, the opposites are true.

"Anti-life" is loaded in the sense that it takes no account of the life of the mother, regardless of whether or not the accretion of organic molecules in her uterus has attained the consciousness of a cockroach. And "anti-choice" is clearly that. It is futile to deny that proponents of this definitely are trying to take the choice away from the individual.

The notion of a conspiracy for protected status for gays is just silly, as it is just another form of discrimination. Most gay people I know just want the same basic rights as the rest of us.

Iowa couldn't, actually

[namespan]

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.

Re:Iowa couldn't, actually

[Pharmboy]

Iowa was also among the first to legalize marriages of blacks and whites. Slavery was never legal in Iowa. Believe it or not, people in "fly over country" are not nearly as backward as some would think. They have been the "first to" do a lot of things. Most of the people I have known from Iowa were pretty progressive in their thinking. Lots of farmers and people who live in the country, yes, but not bigotted.

Business

[jandersen]

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.

Re:For the record...

[calmofthestorm]

The case in the courts now is whether it is a major amendment (gay rights activists' position), since it takes a right away from a minority to the constitution, and thus requires a 2/3 vote rather than the simple majority it barely received, or a minor amendment (gay marriage opponents' position), since it only clarifies a point already provided for in the constitution.