Amazon.com: "It's a glitch!" Oh. Really? Interesting glitch.

[icarus]

The best article on Amazon removing sales rankings from GLBT books:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/04/amazon-responds-to-adult-queries-blames-a-glitch.html

From the LA Times' Carolyn Kellogg, who is smarter than the average PR person:

I asked Patty Smith [of Amazon.com] this:

From a layperson's perspective, thisglitch does seem to have affected certain types of books more heavilythan others. In fact, only one of the top 10 books in your Gay &Lesbian section continues to have a sales ranking (the Kindle versionof "The Picture of Dorian Gray"). No other section is similarlyaffected. Can you comment on that?

The reply:

Unfortunately, I'm not able to comment further.  We're working to resolve the issue, but I don't have any further information.

Heh.

Comments

[slashbluegreen.livejournal.com]

tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html (http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html)
has a very interesting theory about what happened.

I believe the letter to the protesting authors was computer-generated (got something like that myself once upon a time) ... but look at the similaries to Strikethrough here at LJ (national holiday, tech people not available, fundamentalists having time and energy on their hands (I mean it's Easter Holidays!), of course amazon.com is not blameless (someone from management must have made the decision to de-rank those books en masse) but to my mind this was the work of a group of trolls.

[cheshyre]

Combining some of the theories, I suspect Amazon had a policy to hide adult material, intended to be narrowly applied. Thus, the CustSat people were following their assigned script when they gave that information. But trolls found a glitch allowing them to exploit this policy, massively reclassifying works outside the intended purview of policy.

I'm looking forward to hearing more official explanations once the workday starts out in Seattle.

[mad_maudlin]

Okay, I just tested a bunch of titles (mostly culled from Kellogg's blog, plus one from my flist and one personal favorite) and it looks like everything is coming up normally in searches again, even though most of the titles were still missing their rank.

Is this because I'm accessing from Kazakhstan, maybe? Or have they offered a halfway "fix" because they think it'll shut people up?

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I think they can only get so many people to come in on Easter Sunday, so they fixed what they could. I expect (hope) they'll fix the ranks on Monday.

[dancing-moon.livejournal.com]

If you search for something on a title, the books apparantly still show up. I think it's more if you search a general term, like "beach" then the books with no ranking that are tagged beach won't be listed.

[mad_maudlin]

I don't think that's quite it--calcitrix did an experiment with a book she likes and got everything but the current, in-print edition (DVD of the movie version, soundtrack, several downloads and an out-of-print edition for sale used). When I searched that title, it appeared normally and its rank was back.

[squishtoy.livejournal.com]

world's smartest, most homophobic glitch ever.

[bruinsfan.livejournal.com]

Apparently SKYNET and Thomas Dekker's manager may be one and the same...