Quick thing on Amazon

[digitaldiscipline]

Private companies are allowed to suppress stuff.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/censorship

Please put the First Amendment down before you hurt yourselves.

This is just like private citizens can decree that stuff is off-limits in their house, writ large.

It's stupid and unfortunate (and, hopefully, accidental), but it's not censorship.


Note: I'm not suggesting that I think what happened over the weekend is good (in fact, I can understand why a lot of people are very, very unhappy about it); however, Amazon, or any other company, are completely within their rights to do something like this. Obviously, it comes at a huge cost in terms of public opinion, but that's a business decision completely separate from any sort of discussion over the moral or social impact of it, beyond how it impacts the bottom line.

Comments

[tirani.livejournal.com]

Given that I pulled about 400$ of pre-orders of D&D and other books for over the next 4 months the minute I found out about was going on and verified it myself, I suspect it will start to impact the bottom line. I have a feeling that people all over the 'net who care about GLBT issues are going to walk with their mice and wallets to other sites.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

And that is as it should be. Actions have consequences, especially in a free market.

Opprobrium over what happened is fine and dandy, but the cries of "censorship zomg" are, while well-intentioned, inaccurate.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Any automated system can be gamed by another party given a reason to do so. Any policy implmented by people following a script is indistinguishable from an automated system for these purposes. Finally, Amazon exist to sells stuff to people and it's hard to sell stuff that they don't tell people about, so I can't see that Amazon has *anything* to gain from this.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Exactly, which is why my internal compass points towards "technical fuckup" rather than "stupid decision."

However, the followup to this was handled poorly from a PR standpoint, and that has exacerbated things when a more contrite or at least outwardly concerned stance would have quelled much of the furor.

[critus.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it will be interesting to see how they handle this from a PR perspective, but considering that they offer domestic partner benefits I just can't picture this being an anti-GLBT corporate policy stance.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

... which lends even more credence to the possibility of third party shenanigans....

[etcet.livejournal.com]

as, apparently, was the case - http://community.livejournal.com/brutal_honesty/3168992.html

[ladysoleil.livejournal.com]

Or possibly not. http://bryant.livejournal.com/672165.html

Seems as if it's possible, but may not be him.

Nonetheless, here's my deal. Authors are reporting back that they were told it was policy. Troll or not, glitch or not, wank and tempest absolutely, this is something that needs to be sorted out before I feel like I want to continue giving Amazon my $$$.

So, either it is policy, and I take my money to B&N.com instead, or people are interpreting Amazon's policies incorrectly, need to be dealt with, and my money may or may return to Amazon once problems get fixed, or they've come up with a very ham-handed way to institute non-optional content filtering- with the result of, you guessed it.

If they'd set it out as an option to either see or not see "adult" search results, that's fine with me, but it doesn't sit well with me as it stands.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Indeed.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

The poor PR followup is likely entirely due to the timing: If it's a gamed system that can operate fast, it can kick off on a long weekend with a minimum of employees around to watch and those there are likely those with the least experience. If it takes a while to ramp up, then there's plenty of time to plan for the moment of least effective response. The landslide of notice strikes (or is seeded) on a Sunday religious holiday (Easter, Passover, it's even New Year's for a variety of Hindu sects), borrowing feelings of sactimoniousness and mockery thereof (depending on one's viewpoint), which makes for a Very Unfortunate Coincidence, if such it is. If there's malice involved, it's almost elegant in its execution.

[mitejen.livejournal.com]

This.

I mean I agree that it's probably a technical thing, and that the shrill storm of 'OMG THEY HATE TEH GAY' seemed like a severe overreaction, and that their PR people screwed up.

[mitejen.livejournal.com]

THANK you.

I am so tired of seeing my FL peppered with teacup-tempests like this.

[avar1c3.livejournal.com]

If they could provide a reasonable explanation of said bug I'd almost be willing to buy it on the grounds of what an obviously stupid and poorly implemented business move this would be. Seriously? The best way to promote your hetero normative agenda is to label gay books adult? Plus they're headquartered in Seattle, hardly the bible belt.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

*nod* I think you and hellsop are probably on the right track with sussing out what took place. Not being in any kind of hardened security or programming mindset myself, I can kind of get a generalized sense of the social approach, but not a hell of a lot more than that.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

It's really HARD to wrtie something (policy or program) that is both responsive and hard to abuse. The former fail toward witch hunts, and the latter fail toward CIA-style lacks of communication.

[avar1c3.livejournal.com]

Looks like we aren't the only ones: http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html

[avar1c3.livejournal.com]

The thick plottens, someone's rather dubiously claiming responsibility: http://community.livejournal.com/brutal_honesty/3168992.html
Seems more likely they're just someone who thought it was so hilarious they wanted credit.

[ivy]

You know who that is, right? Ping me off LJ if not.

[avar1c3.livejournal.com]

Uh, I'm assuming you meant to respond to the other comment, or should I have some idea who the hell that (http://blogdome.vox.com/profile/) is? If the former, I just didn't read the username the first time. ;)

[avar1c3.livejournal.com]

Oh weird. In the mail it showed you replying to the other one - this is what I get for going to the thread starting at a comment.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

I disagree. It's still censorship, it's just not censorship that's governed by the Constitution.

Yeah, I'd have probably debated the makeup of the iceberg that hit the Titanic, too.

[y2kdragon.livejournal.com]

IMO, it's worse, since it's selective censorship in this case. The tags were changed for some items, mostly those that were of GBLT interest, and marked as "adult", while Playboy and other openly sexual items were not. Someone somewhere had an agenda.

[marchenland.livejournal.com]

This policy has been in place since February.

[sloot.livejournal.com]

Apparently I missed something while I took 4days off the Internet. I'll follow the links in here to get it

[etcet.livejournal.com]

it was, in a nutshell, an internal fuckup when somebody flipped a bit incorrectly when tagging books, which propagated throughout the network.

the guy who claimed credit is a a braggart and a liar.