Amazon Censoring GLBT Books

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panthera

panthera

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Feb 14, 2016
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Well, the Kindle 2 just got thrown off my birthday wish list.

Amazon.com is now censoring books which are relevant to GLBT issues and topics - including academic works with nary a sexual innuendo, much less pornographic content.

Their 'caught with their pants down' excuse that they are removing all "adult" books from their listings got blown out of the water by the Washington Post, which listed several straight books still ranked which are very graphic, indeed.

Anybody have any ideas or thoughts on what we should do? There's already a petition drive ongoing and several hundred authors (!) are demanding an explanation.

This is the exact difference between the christianists and the Christians.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/ind...articleid=CA6651080&talk_back_id=&starting=11
 
Petition site

I am of mixed feelings regarding online petitions. It is awfully hard to avoid the kooks and wing-nuts getting involved. On the other hand, this is going viral and people who care about censorship need to be involved.
I wrote Amazon to ask what's up. Amazon Germany wrote right back saying that censorship is not company policy and is not permitted - nor are German language GLBT books affected at the moment.
Still waiting for an answer from my American account.

And just this last weekend we "old foggies" got a lecture on how the culture wars are over and it is time to let go and move on.

Hah.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy
 
Keven:

This is what journalists call a "developing story," not yet considered hard fact. Amazon is claiming that a transition to an "Adult Products" classification has caused a glitch that will be fixed. It may be - or may not - that there is some nefarious purpose behind all this, but I don't think all the facts are in at this point.

There is an Associated Press story about this at the link below.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/04/12/entertainment/e195040D58.DTL&tsp=1
 
Sandy,

Certainly, a 'glitch' is possible. However, neither the Canadian nor the UK nor the International English sites are affected.
The German, Italian, French and European Spanish sites are not affected.

What bothers me a very great deal about this is the fact that several dozen books which purport to 'cure' homosexuality through Christianity were not affected as were not several books depicting heterosexual rape and hetero sexual practices graphically which, even here in tolerant Germany could not be sold to minors.

Several sociological studies on homosexual behavior as well as books written prior to the 1920's were struck from the list, all books found on one of the most generally circulated lists from the American fundamentalist Christians as books to be banned from school libraries for their gay content were struck off the list. All of them?

It could have been a glitch. The fact, however, that customer support (who actually called me back after I wrote them, but then, unimportant as I am, I am a listed author in the German language) clearly said that yes, there is a problem and yes they are updating it and yes it requires manual intervention suggests to me that this was not a #bot. Had it been, then the #bot would have left a list, would have been given parameters and could have been programmed with one change in logic to search out and reinstate all books which had been 'glitched.'

Amazon has had an ongoing internal battle for some years on this topic, alternately getting plus points from human rights groups and then being rated "red" at other times, depending on who currently had the upper hand.
 
A Little Waiting Couldn't Hurt...

Keven:

I understand what you are saying, but if there is some purpose behind all this, Amazon has painted itself into a corner by saying it was being addressed. If they do not restore everything as they say they will, they have set themselves up for a public-relations disaster.

What I'm trying not to do here is play "Rush To Judgment," a game that has become all too popular in this age of blogs and instant Internet comment. Beginning an inquisition when all the facts are not yet in is resulting in a skewing of events, to the detriment of our culture.

Considering the coarsening that has taken place in our society, with even the most respectable publications and publishers printing stories and words they wouldn't have touched twenty years ago, I think Amazon has some cause to be concerned about minors accessing content that they shouldn't see. An "Adult Products" section, available only to age-verified members, would seem only sensible. It's my hope that this is what they're trying to accomplish. If there is more to it than that, I promise to yell as hard as anyone, and harder than most.

I just want to be sure of the facts before I do that.
 
Sandy,

I understand you. I agree. Keeping up with the trade journals, as I do, this has been creeping up again and again since, well, I first noticed it in February.

It exploded this weekend in the general public consciousness, I guess for me it was just the last straw.

We will see. Let's hope it's not so.

By the by, Amazon did nothing to restrict the really hard-core straight porn listings, just these gay affirming and sociological texts. That kind of runs counter to their attempting to protect minors.
 
interesting...and scary. A hacker?

I am not very trusting of this website, and the code, as written, is a non-starter.

But, the principle is sound, Amazon has taken down this rating tool and, yes, their ratings system is wobbly as all get out right at the moment...

I don't know if this is better or worse than Amazon having a disgruntled employee or christianist in their midst, certainly it should raise all sorts of flags across the board.

The more is made public, the more obvious becomes that this was either a glitch which should have been caught or was intentional and aimed at de-ranking gay literature.

http://gawker.com/5210142/why-it-makes-sense-that-a-hackers-behind-amazons-big-gay-outrage
 
aha - so now it is an internal cataloging failure

So now Amazon is admitting that yes, GLBT books - as well as others - were indeed being de-ranked or de-listed.

But not 'intentionally', rather because a cataloging system was functioning 'improperly'.

There have been comments from the trade for over two months about this and now, only after it went viral (#1 twitter over the weekend) did they actually make the effort to investigate.

Fascinating. I bet we haven't heard the last of this one, especially since a GLBT reseller just released their bulk purchase records showing this only affected the US site and not Canada's.

http://blog.wired.com/business/2009/04/amazon-sales-ra.html
 
post mortem

Well, it turns out that, yes, a single individual did purposefully decide to de-list gay books.

Right now, the excuse is that it was a language problem. Amazon is correcting it - by hand - but has yet to explain how they are going to prevent a christianist from attacking in the future.

The good news is that they are finally telling the truth and not hiding behind the usual corporate blah-blah, nothing to see hear, move along...lies.

It also appears their system can be exploited from outside their house, and this is something they didn't know.

The price of freedom is constant vigilance.

http://booksquare.com/amazonfail-post-mortem/
 
Well, Then, Keven:

I think your title for this thread was a bit premature, and a bit ill-considered, frankly.

So far as Amazon taking some time to sort things out, I think that's easily attributable to the need to be certain of what was going on. As you know, any indexable database that's out of whack takes some time and some doing to get back on track, once you've found the source of the problem, which can be an adventure in itself.

Not everything is a vast conspiracy. As you've seen.
 
Sandy

I grant you that amazon is putting things back in order, that is good.
What is not good is that the problem arose in February and all complaints from affected authors were ignored until it went
"viral" as a conspiracy against "teh gayz". That one single, solitary person, all by themselves as we now know, could decide that homosexuality - unless it is condemned - is worth delisting - is a serious failure in the system. And that is what was done. All the books on conversion therapy and reparative therapy, electro-shocking our genitals to "bring us to Yes-sus, prais the lard!" were purposefully left in place by this one, single person.

The fact that the database is taking awhile to repair is perfectly understandable, I doubt anyone at amazon really had any idea at all just how large a number of gay themed books were deleted right up until Monday afternoon. Their speakers back then were still reassuring us that it was only a few books affected, now we are looking at over 50,000 entries...

Can we split the difference? I appreciate your moderation, you bet ya I tend to see attacks against gays from every corner.

Now, the topic amazon is currently pursuing, and they deserve praise for this is: What else did this 'gentleman' or others decide was worth delisting? The very nature of their database makes it possible to sift and sort for nearly anything one desires to advance through the ranks (for money?) or de-value the ranking of.
 
I think we all vote with our purses and our wallets. Perhaps, more than any other group, GBLT is often forced to select the lesser of the evil/hateful:-(
 

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