Comments on: Amazon = Fail

By: Legible Susan

Legible Susan — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 11:01:45 +0000

I’m confused about the site layout: are the comments threaded? The Reply links and not being in date order suggests they are, but there’s no indication of who people are replying to.

On topic, you probably already know this, but it didn’t just happen over Easter. That’s when they rolled it out to books and a critical mass of people noticed, but it’s been going on at least since Jan.08 on the Kindle listings (www.afterellen.com/node/48877). Francine Saint Marie’s research proved they were specifically targetting anything tagged gay/lesbian.

Having a safesearch as default is sensible, but removing sales rankings to implement it isn’t, and doing it without telling anyone and without allowing account-holders to turn it off is boycott-worthy in itself, even if they’d bothered to set the flags properly.

By: Westerly

Westerly — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 03:32:14 +0000

Just…wow. Really, really disgusting. And 3 days ago I just received a book through Amazon. Will definitely be avoiding these ass-holes from here on in.

By: Elena Perez

Elena Perez — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 18:00:58 +0000

Finally there's an explanation of what happened that makes sense: AmazonFail: An inside look at what happened

By: Godheval

Godheval — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:51:57 +0000

Well, petitions are pointless, so I wouldn’t bother. You probably won’t stop but a small handful of progressives from buying from Amazon, and them only for a short time.

I have to say I’m surprised by all of this, although I had no reason to think that Amazon was a progressive company, or any different from any other corporation run by conservative politics. Huh.

Oh, and by the way, if you’re boycotting Amazon, then you shouldn’t recommend that people buy from Borders Online, since they use Amazon for their online shopping.

By: Holly

Holly — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:13:50 +0000

This whole Amazon debacle has been a great example of censorship at its finest and yet another company that is falling under the buss and catering to the right wing demographic. After the amazonfail hashtag hit number one under trending topics on Twitter there were people actually starting an amazonwin hashtag in support of Amazon removing “filth” from its website. It was a clear indicator that the bigoted, homophobic wing of society is alive and well, and quite sad at that. People were actually buying Amazon gift cards and running giveaways on their blogs in support of Amazon’s idiocy.

By: Zetta Brown

Zetta Brown — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:25:18 +0000

Nice to meet another Angry Black Woman! I stumbled upon your site to check on whom else was talking about this crazy mess. My book–while still showing up in searches–has had its ranking stripped. It’s a hetero erotic romance, but that doesn’t matter. The whole idea is wrong and Amazon’s trying to cover their collective a-holes is pathetic.

Thank goodness Amazon isn’t the only fish in the sea. People should take this seriously. Otherwise, where will it end?

“If you don’t stand for something, you will fall for anything.”
–Malcom X

By: Calvin

Calvin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:44:22 +0000

So it is a Really Elaborate Conspiracy.

By: Calvin

Calvin — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 02:19:24 +0000

Anyone care to suggest a motive (other than the tehdaily one)? I can’t think of that many groups that would be offended by LGBT that wouldn’t be offended by Playboy.

Unless it’s just a really elaborate conspiracy.

By: Misty Kaye

Misty Kaye — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:36:02 +0000

@jsb16 Thank you for that link. It’s nice to see another possible reasonable explanation. It seems like people are always so quick to jump to the worst conclusions without considering all of the avenues. I think you’re right, something like the scenario described in the link you posted makes a lot more sense than Amazon purposefully risking pissing off these very vocal groups.

By: Elena Perez

Elena Perez — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:27:56 +0000

We've got a post up with links showing that it started in February, that Amazon said earlier that it was company policy, and discussing the "tehdely" idea, which has some serious flaws. Also linked to a list of which titles were deranked.