Another Perspective on the Amazon #fail

[qos]

Via a friend's locked post:

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

This person, who worked for Six Apart during the Strikethrough crisis of a year or so ago, has presented a reasonable alternate explanation for the removal of LGBT books from the sales rankings.

Hir theory is that a large group of conservatives have been manipulating the Amazon process for flagging "objectionable" content, rather than Amazon putting into a place a policy that deliberately removes these books from the rankings. If this is true, it's not Amazon that is the homophobic villain.

That said: whatever the reason for the books to have been removed from the rankings, they need to be reinstated. If it's due to a homophobic policy by Amazon, the policy needs to be changed. If it's due to a crusade by an anti-LGBT group then Amazon needs to find a way to prevent its policies from being exploited.

Comments

[strandsofchaos.livejournal.com]

I'm on it.

[strandsofchaos.livejournal.com]

Or... rather... I'm not.

My inquiry was met with a rather quick reply that basically amounted to, "we've got it covered, and communication will come from official channels."

I'll keep my ear to the ground, but I doubt that this low-level functionary will be able to pull too much more information on this one. =\ Sorry.

[qos.livejournal.com]

I'm not surprised. MyCo wouldn't let anyone but a communications or legal official comment on a big issue either.

It will be interesting to see what develops. Even if this was troll work and not an official Amazon policy I hope that there is corrective action in the near future.

[strandsofchaos.livejournal.com]

Same here--and I'm pretty sure there will be. We've got a sizable and vocal LGBT population here, at all levels in the organization. I wholly doubt that it's anything policy driven. It just doesn't make sense--especially after we're gaining traction in the recession--to alienate a very significant percentage of our own workforce population AND our audience.

I'll let you know if I hear anything else. :)

[qos.livejournal.com]

KOMO has an article about it: http://www.komonews.com/economy/42914662.html