Amazon criticized for deranking 'adult' books
Updated at 7:15 p.m. PDT with comment from Amazon.com.
Amazon.com recently delisted from its sales ranking system gay and lesbian book titles that it deemed "adult," raising the ire of some who characterize the move as online censorship.
Author Mark R. Probst wrote on his blog Sunday that he noticed the change a few days ago:
On Amazon.com two days ago, mysteriously, the sales rankings disappeared from two newly-released high profile gay romance books: "Transgressions" by Erastes and "False Colors" by Alex Beecroft. Everybody was perplexed. Was it a glitch of some sort? The very next day HUNDREDS of gay and lesbian books simultaneously lost their sales rankings, including my book "The Filly." There was buzz, What's going on? Does Amazon have some sort of campaign to suppress the visibility of gay books?
Probst, the author of a novel with gay characters in the Old West, said he was perplexed by the move and used his status as a publisher to contact Amazon for an explanation. He said he received the following response from an Amazon Advantage service representative:
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.
Of course, being delisted from the rankings doesn't mean that the book giant has stopped selling the title; it just means that the title won't show up with a public sales ranking or in the best-seller lists--often a factor in how shoppers make their purchases.
An Amazon representative characterized the move as a mistake but declined to elaborate.
"Essentially, there's a glitch in our system and it's being fixed," Amazon spokesperson Patty Smith told CNET News.
Certainly, one could make an argument that deranking titles with "adult" themes would make a reasonable policy for a site that attracts a wide range of the Internet population. But as demonstrated by an online petition that has already attracted more than 4,000 signatures, the policy appears to be biased against books with gay, lesbian, and transgendered characters.
Here's a sampling of books titles that the petition's backers noted are still ranked in the listing system (all notes and descriptions on the titles are supplied by the petition supporters):
• "Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds" by Chronicle Books (pictures of over 600 naked women)
• Rosemary Rogers' "Sweet Savage Love" (explicit heterosexual romance)
• Kathleen Woodiwiss' "The Wolf and the Dove" (explicit heterosexual romance)
• Bertrice Smal's "Skye o'Malley," (which are all explicit heterosexual romances)
• Alan Moore's "Lost Girls" (which is a very explicit sexual graphic novel)
The petition supporters note that the following titles with gay and lesbian themes are no longer ranked on Amazon:
• Radclyffe Hill's classic novel about lesbians in Victorian times, The Well of Loneliness, and which contains not one sentence of sexual description;
• Mark R. Probst's YA novel "The Filly" about a young man in the wild West discovering that he's gay (gay romance, no sex);
• Charlie Cochrane's "Lessons in Love" (gay romance with no sex)
• "The Dictionary of Homophobia: A Global History of Gay & Lesbian Experience," edited by Louis-George Tin (non-fiction, history and social issues)
• "Homophobia: A History" by Bryan Fone (nonfiction, focus on history and the forms prejudice against homosexuality has taken over the years)
The move has raised the ire of heterosexuals, including Kassia Krozser, who wrote an open letter to the online retailer:
Somehow, the brain trust of your company has decided to protect the "entire" Amazon customer base by restricting access to content that someone (who?) decided was offensive. In your zeal to protect me from myself, of course, you managed to leave content that I find singularly repulsive online (really, exploring the human condition is bad, but Mein Kampf is just fine?).As a heterosexual, happily married adult female, I am deeply offended by this decision. As a customer, I am angered enough to take my business elsewhere, and I'd like a refund on my Kindle since, despite reports that your database sweep was not complete, you have decided to limit my ability to purchase books -- from literary classics like Lady Chatterley's Lover to newesque titles like Tipping The Velvet and Running With Scissors.
It's unclear what--if any--impact this backlash will have on Amazon, but certainly many are troubled (and should be) that the bookseller is apparently trying to make certain books harder to find.
Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. Before joining CNET News in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers. E-mail Steven. 
If they want to filter adult things out of their searches, there is a simple way to do it: simply label a book as adult, code a "adult included or excluded" thing in their search engine..... DONE!
There is no need to 'delist' books in the slightest, and Amazon is bucking for a lawsuit here.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=70927484220
Personally? I think it's less to do with adult content and more about not showing things they don't approve of. Whilst as a business they can sell what they want, it reeks of discrimination and double standards.
This was not likely a "glitch". I wrote a blog post on my site about it earlier and it seems like a combination of several dumb decisions. It's not a glitch that they chose the easy way to achieve their goal of reducing access to adult titles - removing rankings rather than changing the search programming and rankings programming. A glitch is generally an accident. This was simply a dumb decision that they could easily have predicted would result in exactly what it did. A smart IT department does not put stuff out there without full tests - or with a certain amount of accepting that there could be unexpected results.
And it's not a "glitch" that - whatever their mechanism is for categorization - they culled nearly all books flagged as GBLT. I don't ascribe anything nefarious, necessarily, but again, a minimal evaluation of the results of their actions would have avoided this problem.
Finally, it's not a glitch that these books no longer appear in the main search across All Departments. It was a conscious decision. Whether they excluded some books they didn't mean to exclude is almost irrelevant. The exclusion of adult books (whatever gets in that category) should be one option, not the only option. That last of course is really up to them, but it's hard to see a downside to a checkbox or something similar.
glamazon-info@amazon.com
people is when we as people of any nation,culture or religion come to a conclusion
that man knows best and says anything goes or that if it feels right to you then do it.
We ALL will come to an End and then what, THE JUDGEMENT.
When man thinks (He) is right all on his on without morality he has Deceived himself.
This Store or or any store Should have the right to say what it will sell or not as well
as ranking,rating or etc.,then the people can choose for them theirself what the indivdual wants.
Really?
And navywife88 you say you have a family member that is gay, but you do realize that Amazon is banning books that help teenagers cope discovering that fact within themselves during one of the most trying parts of their lives.
Now you are right in saying that Amazon can make any choice in what they sell, it is a free market, but what you are seeing here is the other side of that free market. I can call Amazon bigoted and never shop there again because of it. I do not condone censorship in any way, and Amazon is showing that they are willing to partake in censorship. There are several "Christian" text out there that I find offensive, but guess what, if someone were to tell me that they need to be censored I would be just as outraged.
If you are going to fight for freedom of speech, it needs to go both ways.
Most of the comments so far are encouraging but there's a couple of people here who are representative of all that's dragging the human race down. I have one rule: if it doesn't hurt anyone else then it's not their place to judge and they can take their self-righteous judgementalism and shove it.
Yes, you last three, I mean you.
Well Ive gotten something to say!!
It is hurting me, it disgusts me to see two men making out on a street or two women. I dont want my children to see this kind of unnatural behavior. If men were meant to be with men and women with women then who would have the babies? You have to have men and women together as its supposed to be.
[Editor's note: Inappropriate content removed]
gggg sssss: You're clearly not a biologist.
What you're saying is exactly what has been said about interracial marriage.
Bigotry may change it's tune but it's still plain old bigotry with no rhyme or reason behind it. It disgusts you? Does it disgust you when they use the same water fountains as straight people? So you don't complain when a man and woman are doing it but two men or two women and suddenly it's wrong? How? No, "it just is" is not good enough. "It's not natural" is also not good enough. You're typing on a computer connected to a worldwide network in a house with electric power. That's not natural. Hospitals are not natural. Epidurals are not natural. Appendectomies are not natural.
Your other argument is also defunct. There's nothing about who's supposed to be with whom, just the freedom to choose and, as only 10% maximum of any population is gay there'll be plenty of people in the other 90% to have children.
None of this is hurting you, you're just outraged with your bent self-righteous moralising bigotry claiming injury because if you admitted the real reason you're shouting you'd have to admit that you have no right at all to be thumping this particular tub.
By trying to censor these books and generate all this publicity they have helped the authors sell more. Somehow that seems like poetic justice.
Basically, shut the F up, and leave them alone.
And guess what? Homosexuality IS normal from an evolutionary point of view. There are MANY species on this planet (mostly fish) that only HAVE one sex: FEMALE!
And this is how the oppressed and under-dogs lose their case and sympathy from the general public. They over-react several-fold, just like the Prop.8 protesters mailing white powder to the Mormon and Knights of Columbus HQs and harassing Catholic church-goers (including the one at Mount Hope, look it up). Fundamentalism gets nasty on both sides, you'll wipe each other out and unfortunately will take the rest of us down with you.
And I suppose they shot out their own windows and had members of the same sex to make out in front of the congregation too.
May I ask an honest question, no resentment or hatred implied: If the nation issued only civil unions to same-sex and opposite-sex couples and treated them the same in the eyes of the law, and churches were left to marry how they wanted without legal recognition (meaning you would still need to get a civil union if married in the church), would you agree to such a system? I for one would.
"And guess what? Homosexuality IS normal from an evolutionary point of view. There are MANY species on this planet (mostly fish) that only HAVE one sex: FEMALE!"
Actually, you are WRONG. There are some species (earthworms come to mind first) that are BOTH male and female and some actually change sex during their lifetimes ( like parrot fish). Only humans show the trait of homosexuality.
There is no 'redefine'.
I do not agree with what Amazon is doing. but take a good hard look at yourself. You do not even know the man you call a christian. But you are the one being judgemental. You discriminate him because of a religion?
I'm all forfree rights, but please, lets not be closed minded about it.
"people think are 'abnormal' only because they don't personally like them."
Now you show some wisdom.
There are hundreds of fetishes that a person can have. You can call them sexulities if you like.
Kids, Animals, Cars, Same Sex, Older Folks, can all be the focus of folks sexual desire. There are hundreds more.
I personally don't like pedophelia and dozens more. Our "big list of things we don't like personally" likely would have a heck of a lot in common until we hit what you are clearly for and what I'm clearly against." Someone I was close to drove home the point with their suicide in my case. What's your reason? You should know your reasons.
If you don't really know your own reasons you really can't read a knee jerk list like this and see a bigger picture and where you fit within it, or why the labels you are being stuck with are just that labels imposed by the ignorant who assume they are right but don't even really know what the heck they are talking about.
It should never be about 'like' or 'dislike'. The only hard and fast rule is 'does anyone get hurt?'
As it is, homosexuality doesn't hurt anyone.
go ahead, achieve your marvelous equality, then watch as you are bred out of existence by cultures that actually propagate themselves instead of spawning from the dysfunctional rot of the global aristocracy.
i really don't understand conservatives that try to deny gay's their right to marry, stopping them will not turn the clock back and save western civilization from the sins of decadence.
and to all you who are vehemently opposed to amazon's little "glitch" - get a grip and stopping being so reactionary. if you truly believe in tolerance than people have a right to oppose you
Don't try to turn this around, opposing bigotry is not intolerance, it's refusing to accept intolerance.
I have personally worked on the problem of adult material showing up in inappropriate places (like when searching for "bambi" or "rabbit"), and the problem is more complex than anyone could possibly realize without having inside information about Amazon's systems. Amazon stocks tens of millions of books, and it would be impossible to manage all of those manually, so they write software to do it. But it's impossible to write software which flawlessly manages tens of millions of books with human-level comprehension and attention given to each one.
Every time Amazon makes a high-profile mistake, it seems like it launches a hundred conspiracy theories. All these conspiracy theories are wrong, because they all start with the assumption of a deliberate act. I personally have made an innocent mistake which adversely affected a certain class of books (I won't tell you which), and it sparked accusations of prejudice and censorship from that community. The accusations were of course wrong; it's just that the particular programming error I made happened to adversely affect their books far more than any others, and non-programmers have trouble understanding how this could be anything other than a deliberate act (especially when Amazon refuses to explain what really happened).
I really, really wish I could tell everyone why adult content has to be singled out and suppressed. It's not for the reason anyone would think; it's really more of a technical issue. But I signed an NDA. So it will have to suffice for me to say that, without manual suppression, the adult content would slowly but inexorably take over, sort of like a virus. Eventually it would reach the point where you could do a search for "violin", and the first ten pages of results would be adult content. Every adult book or video in the world with "violin" in its title or description would appear at the top of the results list (and *not* because they sell well).
I'm sure they do, but not everthing works as planned when you go live. Just look at what Congress does. Laws take years to hit the books. Then the unintended consequences kick in.
If someone had said "Oh crap, that wasn't suppose to be happening! Let me check into it!" then I don't think we would be even having this discussion.
When a support agent does try to contact technical staff, it's in the form of a "trouble ticket" that goes into the ticket queue. It can take hours, days, or weeks (depending on the priority as assessed by the support agent) for a techie to even *look* at the ticket. And then the techie has to investigate to figure out whether the software is operating as designed, and whether that design was correct (which are two separate issues.) The fact that Amazon responded so quickly on this issue with an "Oh crap we screwed up!" response is a testament to how important this issue is to Amazon. While I was there, my group's ticket queue had customer contact issues that were months old and no one had even looked at them yet.
http://lafiga.firedoglake.com/2009/04/13/cheney-and-lesbians-tag-teaming-amazon-in-response-to-sales-ranking-censorship/
Sadly I'm almost 100% sure they'll cave and change it back. The gay lobby (as I'm sure will be in effect when I read the comments) is pretty vocal.
If bigots like this would stop trying to force their NWO on others then the gay lobby wouldn't have to be vocal at all.
- by anotherjeffblack April 13, 2009 6:55 AM PDT
- as an author whose novel "Planting Eli" (which has very little to do with sex) has been deranked, i need to be convinced this was indeed a glitch and that amazon is democratically vigilant against material it deems "adult."
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- by gggg sssss April 13, 2009 3:05 PM PDT
- possibly because there is NO JOY in gay sex, just a sordid, possibly deadly encounter between and among those with no hope in life.
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- by odubtaig April 13, 2009 6:03 PM PDT
- just because it didn't work out for you...
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- by Angmarr April 13, 2009 8:59 PM PDT
- Dude "odubtaig" knockout punch bro!
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- by LeinhartXx April 14, 2009 9:52 AM PDT
- LOL....Odub...that was so wrong...but oh so....right?
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Showing 1 of 3 pages (129 Comments)however, a quick amazon search of "The Joy of Sex" (ranked) and "The Joy of Gay Sex" (unranked) leads me to believe that any excuse will fall short.