Amazon - LGBT titles

Since Amazon via its acquistion of AbeBooks has a stake in LT - I feel it is appropriate to point out that Amazon has elected to remove sales ranking from LGBT titles. I don't know that this materially affects how LT interacts with Amazon data but I think we should be aware of the decisions our "partners" are making.

Gizmodo link:
http://i.gizmodo.com/5209149/amazon-deems-lgbt-books-too-adult-for-search-best-s...

For Jezebel article with list of restricted (and not restricted) titles:
http://jezebel.com/5209088/why-is-amazon-removing-the-sales-rankings-from-gay-le...

For the Twitterers amongst you:
http://search.twitter.com/search?max_id=1505138954&page=1&q=%23amazonfai...

Amazon member services Ashlyn D.:

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.

Out:
Heather Has Two Mommies

Still OK:
Confessions of a Video Vixen

Ah, the "Land of the Free (unless you are in any way different from me)".

This is wrong on so many levels and I hope their customers give them such a backlash that they fix this "glitch in their system".

Calling Heather Has Two Mommies adult material is pretty laughable.

I read about that too. Amazon gets zero clicks from me until that is rectified.

If you're not going to use Amazon, that's fine, but make sure you let them know you're not using them and why. Otherwise, they probably won't even notice.

Sadly I'm already not using Amazon (and, yes, when I stopped many years ago I told them exactly why), so my continuing to not use them isn't going to make a difference.

Here's my thoughts:

Amazon is now saying it's a glitch. At the most basic level, that's *clearly* the case. You don't release a big feature- or data-change over a holiday weekend. And anyone looking at this for a second could anticipate the shit-storm it would cause. Amazon is many things, but it's not blind to reality. If the data isn't back in place in a day or two, I'll eat my hat. I don't think I'll have to.

By my reckoning, the responses of harried Amazon customer service people on Easter Sunday are not to be given too much weight. Let's wait to hear what Amazon responds when the people talking are not the people so low on the totem pole they have to work telephones on Easter.

What's worrying to me is that the data exists. It must have been intended for some purpose. One option would be a "safe search" feature, like Google has. My real guess, though, is that it was intended to be a subtle factor in adjusting sales rank and/or search results. It would be very easy to write a line of code wrong and turn a subtle factor into a decisive factor.* In a way, a subtle re-ranking is much more insidious than a large one. People who think Amazon is mounting a public crusade against LGBT content are, in my opinion, paranoid. Amazon is not headed by a bunch of anti-gay zealots, and even if they were, they are surely aware that locking gay content out of Amazon would be the worst PR and business move ever. But a tweak I can imagine, and, but for this bug, would be impossible to spot. I find that scarier.

Also scary is the randomness of the titles. Much of the focus has been on LGBT vs. non-LGBT titles. I'm not convinced of that. The data is extremely noisy. All sorts of stuff is in and out. You can find all sorts of patterns in it, if your point is to find a pattern. Heather Has Two Mommies is out but King & King and And Tango Makes Three are in. Is Amazon biased against non-oviparous commoner-homosexuals, or is it really messy data?

The goal of Amazon opponents should NOT be to restore the items. They will most certainly be restored. The goal should be wring from Amazon an explanation, and make them promise not to use the data in some less obvious way.

*We've done that. Here, for example, you can imagine pseudo-code like:
if(sexual) { rank *= .9; }
being written as
if(sexual) { rank = .9; }
so it assigns a .9 rank instead of lowering the actual rank.

In looking at some of the searches, I have to go with Tim on this one at this point. Brokeback Mountain shows up in all its formats, as do a large number of titles and products associated with crossdressing (all arguments about the sexual preference of crossdressers aside, it's seen as a "gay thing" by a lot of people). I also agree that if it were not so blatant, but still happened on a more quiet level, that *is* even more worrisome. I'm sure the LGBT community will be watching this very closely and those are interested in this will have the information about adjustments made very available to them.

Still, it doesn't hurt to send them an email regarding this, so they know more people are watching and think this is important. If the original goal was to do something more sinister with the data, perhaps a large number of complaints will make them think twice about even that level of activity.

Note that some say that Brokeback Mountain was showing up without a sales rank. They may well be rolling it back as we speak. (That's another factor that needs to be considered. Amazon, like Google, does not have a single datastore in perfect synch at all times. What you get depends on what data center you hit, when.)

I would be more inclined to think well of Amazon and dismiss the incident as a possible glitch if there weren't already allegations of this happening as far back as February:

http://craigspoplife.blogspot.com/2009/04/is-amazon-homophobic.html

There is also at least one specific example of ranking removal that doesn't seem quite so random or glitchy as one would hope: one edition of Radclyffe Hall's novel The Well of Loneliness was subtitled "A 1920s Classic of Lesbian Fiction." That edition has had its sales rank removed, while editions without the subtitle still have their sales rank.

EDIT: Oops! I didn't realise until too late that I accidentally posted this under my girlfriend's LibraryThing account. Any speculations made are entirely my own, not hers.

Not to be obtuse, but is the removal of sales rank really that important? If it is, how so? It seems that the other functions that allow you to connect to related material are still active, so what is the real effect of having the sales rank removed?

Removing the sales rank apparently also made it impossible to search for the material through the main Amazon search.

(It also meant that all those books showed as having 0 sales from Amazon for the period. Since publishers, advertisers, etc. factor in Amazon sales to their calculations, it handicapped those books it terms of selling and marketing, too, beyond just Amazon.)

(Plus, of course, it sucks just that they don't get a sales rank like everyone else.)

And, yes: since Amazon doesn't have a functional Works system, the removals are by edition: messy data means that some books are still listed in one edition, but not in others.

>5 kawika:

If you're not going to use Amazon, that's fine, but make sure you let them know you're not using them and why. Otherwise, they probably won't even notice.

I emailed Amazon last night just after I posted. Amazon reply (sent early this morning):

Hello,

Thanks for contacting us. We recently discovered a glitch in our systems and it's being fixed.

Thanks again for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.

I will be interested in seeing how Amazon handles this - and will be looking for an explanation that protects again the subtle data massaging that Tim describes in 7.

An interesting post on a possible reason for this other than "we hate homos":

http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html

Yes, it is interesting, Morph, except there is no "flag this as adult" option on Amazon.

while I don't believe for one moment that Amazon has suddenly adopted a company-wide anti-LGBT policy, I also don't believe that this phenomenon is a "glitch" which implies something extremely temporary, as if something broke on Saturday, was discovered on Sunday and is being fixed on Monday. Clearly there is a systemically bad, even exploitable loophole in their programming somewhere.

And what I really don't get is the global application of the results of the"de-ranking." Amazon obviously is incredibly sophisticated in the way it tailors information to its customers. I think pretty much everything on my home page is there because of something I did or some term I searched. Surely the natural thing to do would be to implement user-defined filters, and let me define my search results by my own parameters.

Any book can be tagged as adult.

It's true, Morph, but the books that were effected weren't tagged adult. There is no obvious-to-the-naked-eye reason for what's going on.

I don't buy into the discrimination train of thought. I worked for a company that has benefits for domestic partnerships. They were very supportive of GLBT rights. Amazon, the company, has benefits for domestic partnerships which in my mind means they support GLBT rights. Yeah, it's bigger than a glitch, but I'm sure it's nothing more than a programming error of some type and not a changed policy. It will be fixed.

I'm not saying that it's not a glitch of some sort, but it's bigger than some minor programming error and I'm less interested in getting it fixed - though of course it should be fixed - than I am in a real explanation of what happened and why it seems that books related to glbt/feminist/sexuality issues seem to be the mass of those effected.

#19 -- I don't see a contradiction between Amazon allowing benefits for domestic partners (who aren't always gay, BTW) on the one hand, and perhaps making GLBT books more difficult to find and market on the other. One policy is for employees, the other aimed at satisfying a certain group of customers. It's all business.

what is the real effect of having the sales rank removed?

It looks to me like sales rank is a principle factor in sales rank. Try searching for something generic, like "love," and what comes up seems very much the popular stuff, not things with love in the title twice.

Again, Amazon is not about to remove any category of books from its search! But if my guess is right--that this is a bug from a more subtle sales-rank manipulation--it might well be important.

If complete de-ranking made books unsearchable, that's confirmation it's a factor.

No one's mentioned this article yet.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/13/amazon-claims-glitch-caus_n_186054.html

As a computer programmer, my husband says it would be very simple for lower-level Amazon programmers to make the kinds of changes we're seeing without upper management's knowledge. That might account for the seeming randomness of what's de-ranked and what's not, even down to different versions of the same book being treated differently. Perhaps rogue employees are what Amazon means by a "glitch."

Has anyone mentioned this article yet?
The idea of a glitch does not seem so far fetched, and someone messing with the system on top of that would be just as likely.
http://valleywag.gawker.com/5210142/why-it-makes-sense-that-a-hackers-behind-ama...

If they were going to censor they would do a good job. This is amazon we are talking about. I think they would know enough to 1) do a better job, and 2) not walk into such a flamewar without some public statement about the intent to filter on some level.

People need to stop thinking the world is out to get them and cool down.

25>

People need to stop thinking the world is out to get them and cool down.

That's easy for you to say, and not likely to be helpful.

Look, for LGBT people, a lot of people really are out to get us. When you're coming from an environment where voters can arbitrarily rule that your marriage is no longer valid, or where you can be fired for referring to your spouse by name or pronoun at work, or where you can be barred from the hospital where your sweetie is gravely injured, you're a bit less likely to assume anti-gay actions are innocent. If it were Linux books that got de-ranked, sure, nobody's out to get Linux users. But there are plenty of people who'd like LGBT people to disappear.

I think this was something intended to be more limited that "escaped", rather than that Amazon has a new company-wide policy of bigotry, but I do think Amazon was deliberately attempting to create a censored subset of results to cater to customers who equate "LGBT" with "inappropriate adult material", for one purpose or another.

Just a thought but isn't most of Amazon's coding done in India or somewhere in Asia ? I know they went through and cleared out a lot of US workers in the late 90s.

I know that as a company they are very hard to deal with in terms of their presentation. Clicking one of those buttons about finding an error has always been a waste of time. You get a canned response with double speak denying they are wrong, even when they are.

They are very good about dealing with product problems and fixing problems with merchandise sent out, but not so much with the Amazon facade.

They also have already tried to suppress the books of people who self-publish, but don't use their own product Book Surge, so it isn't so far fetched that they are caving into or courting some group that has specific targets.

http://antitrust.booklocker.com/

Thank you Lorax.

I had so many responses to the "paranoid" comments that I've typed and erased and typed and erased. The fact is nothing I can say is going to convince the people who think that we are being paranoid that history has given us very good reasons to assume the worst. Knowing you can lose your apartment, your home, your health care, your children or your life tends to give you a certain perspective on motives. I'm willing to bet those of you who think we are paranoid don't have to wonder whether your loved ones will be allowed to sit with you in a hospital room if someone hits you in the noggin with a bat.

In our world, it's better to be paranoid and safe than naive and not.

As for the glitch comment... so they were experiencing this glitch back in February when they started removing the ranking with the explanation that it was for "adult content"? Ummm, yeah, ok. The books are flagged for a reason, not likely one many of us would agree with. And corporate america isn't known for being honest and up front about ANYTHING, so if I don't believe them based on their "glitch" comment you'll excuse me...

>26 lorax:,28 I believe you. I may not have walked in your shoes, but I can observe the footsteps.

And of course there's the question of "who/what's next?" If this was deliberate on someone's part, why would we think this is anything other than a test case? If this had escaped detection, I can imagine a whole set of lovely targets--non-mainstream religions, controversial pieces of science, lots and lots of information that people can't read if they can't even find it in the first place.

>24 Tigercrane: makes an interesting point. I'm in software myself, and was wondering about this when Tim suggested his example pseudo-code in >7 timspalding:. Amazon could be the most wonderful, fair-minded company in existence, and it would still be extremely difficult for them to police this kind of thing internally. They could be the next Evil Overlords and be secretly actively doing this and at the same time could honestly point to the difficulty of rooting it out.

Given 1) the complexity of dealing with a large corporation like Amazon and 2) the inimical subtlety of possible technical implementations, my question is "How can we believe that Amazon actually is doing the correct thing?" How can pressure be put on such a group if one doesn't think they are?

This response was sent to someone I know.

===================
Hello,

Thank you for contacting Amazon.com.

This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles - in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search.

Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

Thanks for contacting us. We hope to see you again soon.

===================

Draw your own conclusions...

See the Seattle P-I story: http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archives/166329.asp?source=mypi

I'm relieved to hear it was the French that did it.