Amazon Censoring Search Rankings?

[Arainach]

The good people at Amazon have made a small change to the way you can search for books. It’s Easter Sunday, so you’re probably not supposed to notice. The target of their new approach is anything that they consider to have adult content, and especially anything that might involve GLBT issues. The writing community is already staring to blaze about this, but it needs much wider attention.

Basically, any title that Amazon consider "adult" will no longer be included in the "Best Sellers" lists – or ranked at all. These titles will not show up on all searches, even when the exact title of the book is entered. Who decides what books are "adult"? That’s not at all clear. But whoever’s making the choices is casting the net far and wide, and hauling in an awful lot of GLBT books.

Long list of various sources:

DailyKos (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/4/12/719278/-Amazons-New-Moralityfor-your-protection)
Jezebel (http://jezebel.com/5209088/why-is-amazon-removing-the-sales-rankings-from-gay-lesbian-books)
List of Known Censored Books (http://community.livejournal.com/meta_writer/11992.html)

Seriously? For reference, a lot of the books being censored are non-fiction, such as Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America and The Advocate College Guide for LGBT Students. REAL dangerous content there, ayep.

I'd love to understand Amazon's logic for trying to impose their (ridiculous) morality on everyone. And it's a double shame, because Amazon was high on my list of favorite retailers in terms of pricing and customer service prior to this. Guess it's time for me to start going back to local bookstores.

For proof that this isn't just a conspiracy, do an Amazon search for Heath Ledger DVD (http://www.amazon.com/s?ie=UTF8&tag=mozilla-20&index=blended&link_code=qs&field-keywords=Heath%20Ledger%20DVD&sourceid=Mozilla-search). Huh, that's funny, the Brokeback Mountain DVD doesn't appear anywhere in the search results even though that's one of his most popular and best-selling performances. That's mighty odd.

What say you? Is this at all defensible?

[Bloodcinder]

I was once behind a router that disallowed me to look up information about the band Barenaked Ladies.

I'm not surprised that this is good intentions gone bad. It'll probably be remedied quickly once they figure out how to improve their content recognition.

[Seegtease]

I don't know if it's a good intentions gone bad or not, but Amazon has every right to censor what they want. It'll be carving their own tombstone, though.

Well, that might be a little dramatic, but it can't possibly be good for business.

But really, why is it okay for them to censor adult material (non gay related) but not okay for them to censor any gay related material?

[Arainach]

Because there are a variety of legal systems in place to strongly encourage censorship of erotica/pornography, so that can be argued to be in the interest of the shareholders, but censoring any and all gay material is just being assholes.

[Gio Takahashi]

Considering that users can sell their things through Amazons (I think, never done business with them), I'm sure they are screwed over by this, especially when it comes to things that fit this topic.

[Arainach]

I'm not surprised that this is good intentions gone bad. It'll probably be remedied quickly once they figure out how to improve their content recognition.While I'd love to be wrong, I'm not entirely convinced that this is the case. In the DK link, an actual publisher contacted Amazon privately and was told thatMany of us decided to write to Amazon questioning why our rankings had disappeared. Most received evasive replies from customer service reps not versed in what was happening. As I am a publisher and have an Amazon Advantage account through which I supply Amazon with my books, I had a special way to contact them. 24 hours later I had a response:

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.

Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,

Ashlyn D
Member Services
Amazon.com Advantage

[Seegtease]

Have they always disallowed "adult" material? If so, what did they change?

[chefTENGU]

I heard on the radio today that Amazon has since announced that the gay material isn't appearing on the search rankings due to a "glitch" in their system.

Sounds like a pretty convenient glitch to me. Although, if they're calling it such, I hope that it means that they're planning on fixing it.