AmazonFAIL

[dmarley]

I'm sure that some of you have already been bombarded with information about Amazon.com's new dickwad policy of removing sales rankings and search results for gay- and lesbian-themed material. If you are among that number, please feel free to move along. :)

For the rest of you, here's what's been happening.

The policy of removing ranks and limiting searches for "adult" materials has, apparently, been implemented on a small--and secret--scale for several months. It was only recently, when several high-ranking gay and lesbian themed novels disappeared from said rankings, that author Mark Probst inquired about why his novel, The Filly, had disappeared. Here is the text of the reply he received:

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

Now, I have, in fact, read The Filly. It's a young adult novel. There is no explicit sex, no violence. It's about a young man discovering and exploring his first love, and coming to terms with his own sexuality. That's it. And just because the young man happens to be gay, Amazon.com has decided that young men who are, perhaps, trying to find materials to help them deal with their own sexuality shouldn't be allowed to read this book. (In a dose of truly bitter irony, A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality is now at the top of the search for "homosexuality" on Amazon. How nice.)

Yesterday, I wrote to Amazon using the "Contact Us" button on the Help page. Here's the letter I sent:

Dear Amazon,

As a long-time Amazon customer, I am appalled at your new policy of stripping sales ranks and blocking searches for gay and lesbian themed material in the name of "protecting" buyers, while leaving ranks and searches available for heterosexual materials which are more violent and more sexual. As an adult, I am also infuriated that you have decided to "protect" me without informing me or giving me the option of deciding *for myself* if I would like to have my searches filtered or not. If you are not going to give your adult customers the option of choosing what level of "safety" they require, then I'm afraid that I will have to take my business to on-line stores where I will be treated as an adult, and where I will also be allowed to browse for those books that interest me, instead of being shunted into what Amazon.com has, apparently, deemed fit and proper for me to read. Until you change this policy, I shall have to remain,

Your former customer,

[My legal name redacted]

I wasn't the only one who sent a letter, and today I, and the others who had e-mailed, received this letter in return, claiming that the issue was a "glitch":

Hello,

Thanks for contacting us. We recently discovered a glitch in our systems and it's being fixed.

Thanks again for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.

Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:

If yes, click here:
[link redacted]
If not, click here:
[link redacted]

Please note: this e-mail was sent from an address that cannot accept incoming e-mail.

To contact us about an unrelated issue, please visit the Help section of our web site.

Best regards,

Jana P.
Amazon.com
We're Building Earth's Most Customer-Centric Company

Considering that they had just told Mark Probst outright that The Filly's exclusion was a new policy, my immediate response, echoed by most everyone else who'd received this letter, was "Glitch, my ass." I clicked the "No" link, and sent the following:

You replied to my concerns about the elimination of gay and lesbian content in your rankings and searches saying that it was a "glitch." This is *not* what you said when authors initially wrote to you about their concerns that their books had disappeared from your rankings. You were quite clear that this was a new policy, and not a "glitch." If you are saying that the "glitch" is that the new policy was implemented too broadly, then I'm sorry, but that is still unacceptable to me as a customer. Any policy which seeks to hide *any* content from me, which is designed to shunt me away from content that *you,* and not I, feel is inappropriate for me *without telling or asking me,* is unacceptable. It is even more appalling to me that you have singled out gay and lesbian materials on the apparent assumption that anything to do with homosexuality should be hidden and censored.

If you gave an option to unfilter so-called "adult" material, then I would have significantly fewer problems with this policy (though I would still be angry at the blanket elimination of any material described as gay or lesbian). It is your choice to refuse to allow me access to "adult" material without recourse, and it is, therefore, my choice to continue to boycott your business--and to explain, in public, in whatever forums are available to me *why* I am boycotting your business--until I am satisfied that my searches will not be censored without my consent or knowledge. I therefore remain,

Your (still) former customer,

[My legal name redacted]

More links:

meta_writer seems to be linkspam central. Included in the links are contact e-mails and phone numbers for Amazon.

rydra_wong has, as usual, rounded up links and information. There are several posts on the subject, so I'm simply going to link directly to the calendar view for April, 2009, and recommend you begin reading on the 12th.

Unfunnybusiness on Journalfen has a post and link round-up.

snacky has also posted some links, including another good summary post by cleolinda.

I've also culled some links from the above on my Delicious account, available under the Amazonfail tag.

Some final thoughts:

Why the heck, if Amazon was so keen to "protect" their shoppers, did it not occur to them to give their customers an opt-out for this? I can buy that the wholesale eradication of anything gay and lesbian wasn't what they had in mind--though I'm also pretty sure that they're way more sorry for getting caught than for doing it. But it's clear that they have been--and probably intend to continue--filtering the searches for all their customers whether they want it or not. Even if they implement this policy in an even-handed manner to filter only material that is sexually explicit or violent (though, frankly, violence doesn't seem to be bothering them much), I do not want this. I'd still be pissed about singling out the gay and lesbian books, but I would be a lot less angry if I had the option to choose for myself whether I wanted to be "protected" by Amazon's search filters.

Oh, yeah: Amazon Rank

ETA: If you're looking for an alternative to Amazon, Indie Bound is a site where you can search for books and then order them from an independant bookseller in your area. Very nifty.

ETA 2: Amazon's second reply:

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Amazon.com.

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.

Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.


Sincerely,

Customer Service Department
Amazon.com

Okay. I am willing to grant that Amazon did not deliberately set out to eradicate gay and lesbian-themed works, that the "error" was widespread enough to suggest that it wasn't targeted.

This doesn't, however, answer any of my above concerns about the fact that they've started filtering content in the first place, without the knowledge or permission of their users. I suppose, really, that it's almost a good thing this happened, because otherwise I wouldn't have known that they were filtering. Also, the fact that Amazon admitted to filtering The Filly shows that they have no clue what they're doing with said filtering process. I'm also not convinced that the process isn't somewhat biased against gay and lesbian content, if an Amazon rep could blithely presume that The Filly was adult. I guess I'll be waiting to see Amazon's next move.