astridv: (Default)
astridv ([personal profile] astridv) wrote2009-04-13 03:21 pm

(no subject)

joining the googlebomb... Amazon Rank. (context)

I'm not canceling any orders yet, I'm waiting to see how they respond. I hope they can provide a convincing explanation for this 'glitch' and a quick way to rectify the situation... I've come to depend on that site and it'd be a huge inconvenience finding alternatives.

I want to believe it's a hacker or troll attack, rather than an expression of a bigot company policy. Really, I have trouble imagining the powers that be at Amazon being this willfully stupid.
ratcreature: RatCreature's toon avatar (Default)

[personal profile] ratcreature 2009-04-13 02:06 pm (UTC)(link)
I think that even if this extreme hack'n'slash version of their "adult" filtering is really a "glitch", and they go back on it they should still amend the previous version of their net nanny with some check box to opt out of it, rather than doing these opaque modifications to your search results without telling you. From what I've heard this happened to a few books for a while now, only it wasn't enough to catch attention. So I assume they had some sort of filtering in place before and just weren't very transparent about it. But if they want to separate some content out of searches I want to be able to tell them to search there too.

[identity profile] jwaneeta.livejournal.com 2009-04-13 03:30 pm (UTC)(link)
I have a feeling they are going to backtrack liek whoa and crawl on their bellies for good measure. When the Amazon people who understand the internets come back from holiday, that is.

[identity profile] crysothemis.livejournal.com 2009-04-13 03:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Really, I have trouble imagining the powers that be at Amazon being this willfully stupid.

Word. I'm still hoping it's a right-wing attack on their system. Which doesn't make it any prettier, but would at least make someone other than Amazon the bigots.

[identity profile] calcitrix.livejournal.com 2009-04-13 06:59 pm (UTC)(link)
I can't see how any explanation of large numbers of "report this book" complaints going in would work--via a program or lots of people (I've heard someone blame Warriors for Innocence), as that's not an option for books on Amazon as it is for their other products.

Nor can I quite believe that Amazon would do this on purpose.

Unfortunately, Amazon's first response was, quite clearly, to state that it was on purpose as part of a mature content filtering process. Someone's going to get fired.

Which leaves perhaps...a really, really amazing hacker.