Amazon.com had deranked books containing lesbian/gay/bi/transgendered content because they are "adult". I didn't say LGBT erotica, mind you. ANY book that someone has complained about that has that subject matter in it is no longer popping up in "popular search terms" searches and top seller lists, as well as the "if you liked ____, you might like ____" suggestions, all of which helps to sell books, which is what Amazon is supposed to do. As one blogger pointed out, when doing a search for the term "homosexual," the first book that pops up is "A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality.” Because that's not at all offensive. Another blogger writes "Amazon has deranked Annie Proulx, E.M. Forster, but not American Psycho. Mein Kampf and books about dog fighting are ranked and can be searched from the front page, but not books about gay love or books with erotic content." Yeah, I guess protecting customers from understanding gay people really IS more dangerous than turning them onto the preachings of Hitler.
Amazon has issued an apology for this "glitch" in their system. And that would be fine and all... if they didn't have books that go so far as to display nudity in a heterosexual context escaping their deranking glitch, and it hadn't been happening gradually over a week, if not more. They even deranked "Becoming a Man" by Paul Monette, which won the 1992 National Book Award. When author Mark Probst was informed of his book being deranked a few days ago, Amazon responded with this lovely explanation (prior to the "glitch" excuse that managed to even keep the novel "Brokeback Mountain" from popping up in related searches):
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
Someone compiled a list of affected works here.
I don't buy the glitch. Call me a cynic, but that is way too convenient. I believe it's either something that Amazon does automatically when a book is tagged as being "adult" by their users (and I would bet, if this is the case, that it was done by the religious right), and they blindly apply the deranking system. Either that or there are people at Amazon who actually do think that anything discussing sexuality in any way that is not heterosexual is somehow "more adult". Either way, I am disgusted that this happened, and even more disgusted that they have yet to fully remedy this situation. I expect there to be a better response than "It's a glitch, we're trying to fix it" once this all ends. That is, of course, assuming they fix this revolting display of discrimination and censorship.
Until then, I shall adopt the new definition of "Amazon rank," as defined by Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, while boycotting Amazon. I encourage all of you who buy from there to do the same.
P.S. Why, exactly, is this less of a news story than Obama's new dog? Seriously, this country and our press piss me off so much sometimes.
Edited to add: More food for thought here. This is an interesting look at the books that were de-ranked and the categories they were listed under according to the publisher and Amazon. According to this posting, "It appears that all the content that was filtered out had either 'gay', 'lesbian', 'transgender', 'erotic' or 'sex' metadata categories. Playboy Centerfold books were categorized as “nude” and “erotic photography”, both categories that apparently weren’t included in the filter." And as for how long this has been happening, it appears that is has been going on since at least February. Here is author Craig Seymour's timeline of events when dealing with Amazon and its deranking of his book due to it's adult label.
I would like to further add that while I realize it seems like I am saying Amazon is full of bigots, I'm mostly talking about their response to the feedback about such books being deranked and their lack of effort in putting out an official statement or remedying the situation. That it had happened in the past and they issued a similar policy statement to two authors about why their books had been deranked is incredibly problematic, and the list of categories that seem to have a blanket-ban put on them is disturbing, as well. I'm not saying someone at Amazon hates gay people and did this in order to spread the hate; I think it's entirely possible that some people at Amazon made this decision in order to keep "offensive" material hidden. The notion that these categories could be seen as "offensive" and in need of censorship is also problematic, and smacks of idiocy rather than hatred. Here is a link that I think reflects my mindset pretty well.
And another thought is that this could be a result of trolling, which is potentially plausible (that is, the massive ban) but is still the fault of Amazon for having a system that allows censorship based on a system that is clearly easy to exploit.
UPDATE: By Tuesday, the day after I wrote this rant (not making a correlation, just giving a time line) Amazon has said this was "a ham-fisted cataloging error," and they say they are working to fix it. I am in the same boat as the people who are waiting to hear more about what they have to say about this situation. It's still really unclear. How it was possible for such a cataloging error to have occurred needs to be explained. And, as people who have worked for large corporations such as AOL have noted, this doesn't read as a technical glitch and I really do think that the "error" was more of a human kind rather than some programming issue.
I think one of the best points of view is being expressed by Christopher Rice in an interview over at Queerty. Essentially he said that a company like Amazon, a giant online megastore that has definitely hurt small book stores (and most homosexual-oriented bookstores are small), needed to have better PR about this and still does.
I mean you know, we already lost A Different Light in [West Hollywood, CA], several weeks ago and in no small part because of internet giants like Amazon. So, they need to stop acting like a drunken elephant and starting like a gentle giant. They need to recognize their influence and their size and they need to behave accordingly. I think there needed to be a much better P.R. campaign around this and there still needs to be greater clarity in their response.
Also, he begs the question of if this really was just a cataloging error, why did it all come to head this weekend? I mean, it HAD been happening before this. It's just that suddenly it all hit on Sunday (Easter Sunday, no less, which has definitely fueled some rumours of Amazon's intentions). I am glad they recognized the error and are working to fix it, but I need to see how far the fixing goes, and I think they need to be more open about this "adult content" policy, as well as this error that could allow for such a thing to happen.
So, not full-on ragefest anymore, but I'm still simmering. I really, really don't like the censorship aspect that was brought up during this whole ordeal. I mean, please, for the love of God, get rid of Ron Jeremy's autobiography if you're going to censor things.
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