catsittingstill

There is an interesting theory put forth here, that the de-ranking at Amazon may result from some fundy nutgroup flagging anything with teh gay as "adult content" or "offensive content" or something. If they had enough people, working in a coordinated way, they might be able to trigger some sort of automatic unranking of books they target.

A weekend that is also a major holiday for two religions would be a great time to do this, because the people minding the store are likely to be the ones without seniority (and therefore experience) and thus will take longer to notice something wrong and may not be able to set it right themselves.

So...

Maybe it is Amazon's fail, in which case I stand ready to trim their ears closer to their heads with a dull spoon (metaphorically speaking). But maybe it's some fundy nuts trying to turn a liberal group (people who want fair treatment for gays) against a relatively liberal company.

So I think I'm going to sit back and wait a while before doing anything more. Life is short--but not so short I can't give them until the end of Monday to make some progress on setting things right.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

technoshaman.livejournal.com

It's Amazon's fail one way or the other. Whether they've been exploited from within or from without, this is not the first time they've committed a massive PR fail (lessee... spamming, the "your friends bought this" flap, more spam, and then selling Harry Potter 7 at 50% off on pre-order)... the second spam flap of which I nearly had to sic the state's attorney general on them for; instead, I managed to turbo the issue via an inside contact and get it taken care of, but I shouldn't have had to do that...

Now, as I said elsejournal, if the issue contains an external element, those responsible should also be outed... but AMZN *ought to know better* and thus has to bear at least some blame regardless. Leaving an automated system for deranking a book without some sort of check/confirmation mechanism, if that is indeed the case, is, bluntly put, asking for it. Heck, even if somebody hacked their computers, it's still doubleplusungood, maybe moreso... hello, credit card info on the network?

There is fail here. What remains to be seen is why.

jenrose

Whether or not it is directly their fault or not, it IS THEIR RESPONSIBILITY.

Period.

And I honestly can't tell you how I'd flag anything as anything, and I tried to find some way of doing it.

My #1 theory is an "infiltrator" employee.