Subscribe to Breaking NewsVanasco: Was AmazonFail a hacker prank?
UPDATE: Well, maybe not. From Feministing:
She spoke to their Amazon rep today, and he told her it was definitely not a glitch. From Brooke’s email to me:
Basically he said that amazon has been experimenting with the way they dole out content specifically so that people who are searching Harry Potter or whatever won’t run into links to products that might be offensive. …It’s super fucked up, but apparently he’s saying that Amazon is a bully when it comes to stuff like this and it’s all about sales for them and it’s not about censorship.
…He also said no human is responsible for the decisions per se, and that it’s all about tagging and feeds which are constantly being tweaked. He does think that amazon will retweak the tags based on the uproar that happened over the weekend.
Others say that the rep doesn’t know what he/she is talking about. In any case, the “no human is responsible” line is kind of fishy. At some point, humans were involved. someone made the decision to tag, or not to tag, or to not reveal the truth to the public. Amazon is a giant company – why are there still rumors about this? Why hasn’t a statement from Jeff Bezos been released?
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Gay websites, including this one, were aghast that Amazon.com seemed to have moved many mainstream gay and lesbian books into the “adult” category – and so automatically removing them from the sales rankings, while other books, like one of Playboy centerfolds, remained.
But it seems now that the tagging – which Twitter users quickly dubbed “#AmazonFail” was actually a hacker prank.
Gawker says that:
The hacker, known as Weev, with whom we’ve had dealings before the “amazonfail” episode, is saying that the whole escapade was the result of his exploitation of a vulnerability in Amazon’s product-rating tools.
On livejournal, Weev said:
Hay dude. Amazon removed its customer-based reporting of adult books yesterday. I guess my game is up! Here’s a nice piece I like to call “how to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code”.
There are some doubters, though, saying Weev is taking responsibility for something that Amazon itself did.
Which is the truth? It sounds possible that it’s a prank – but even so, Amazon.com didn’t help itself by calling it a “glitch” instead of expressing extreme regret that dozens gay and lesbian books – such as Ellen DeGeneres’ autobiography – would be accidentally classified as inappropriate.
this is the response i got from my e-mail to Amazon
Hello,
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.
I know! I have a plan. Let’s boycott ALL books. NO ONE READ AGAIN!!!
Sadly us gays clearly read more than the weaker breeding obsessed straight people and most authors that are so loved by these hetties were written by homos… but hey. Don’t read. Stop reading this now. No more reading.
The hacker theory is debunking. Amazon’s current explanation is that this was a “ham-fisted cataloging error”.
Uh, huh.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure this out. The smoke all points to the same fire — it looks like Amazon focused on gay and lesbian books when it “ham-fisted” implementation of an “adult material” policy, ignoring straight books or treating them differently.
The unresolved question is “Why?” What decision was made, who made that decision, and why was the decision made? That is what I want to know, and what will remain unresolved until Amazon comes forward with a full explanation.
Until Amazon gets real and gets honest, I’m not buying so much as a paperclip from them.
Below is the response which i received from Amazon when i wrote to them asking for a public apology to the Gay community. We should all have a greater impact by writing to them and asking them why the “Specific book title” search comes up when searching for Homosexual literature.
Hello,
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.
Please let us know if this e-mail resolved your question:
If yes, click here:
Come on folks, look at the silver lining! Look at the power we have, we got f-ing mad and they backpedelled so fast you could feel the wind at our heels.
Keep up the good work, GLBT community…we must use this power to speak out as often as possible. From insipid coporate advertising to companies offering equal benefits, we weild a very strong power when we band together! We have the power of the purse and they know it.
Who would have thought, on the eve of the historic Stonewall anniversary that giants like Amazon, and the organizers of the easter egg role would be BOWING DOWN AT OUR FEET.
FEEL THE POWER AND USE IT!
I would suggest that all gblt customers stop buying from amazon and go to one of their competitors. Let’s make the pink dollar talk guys!
This reminds me of that Family Guy sketch, “I’m not really a woman, I’m a man….I’m not really a man, I’m a horse…I’m not really a horse, I’m a broom” or something like that.
Amazon is so full of it.
I used Amazon once, and will never use it again. Their vendors aren’t all trustworthy. I ordered a used copy of a “rare as hen’s teeth” C.D. a while ago. Stan Webb, I got Frieda Paynes Greatest Hits! Amazon, bite me!
Holy crap! Is true, if you go to amazon and type “homosexuality” in books the first result is “A parent guide to prevent homosexuality”.
What fucked up business are they running here? I feel so betrayed.
I’m glad this issue came up, because last week I didn’t know that Amazon carried “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality” and other abusive hate literature. Now I do know that, and I’ll never buy another book (or anything else) from them again.
I wish some prominent programmers would explain that the method Weev posted is very unlikely.
He says he had a script that found all Gay & Lesbian categories. However, not all Gay & Lesbian categories were affected. The ones under Kindle > Gay & Lesbian weren’t de-ranked. An automated script would have found all of them.
What likely happened is someone inside Amazon, accidentally, intentionally or confusedly manually selected the wrong catgories or “nodes” to include in the “adult” filter.
Though Amazon is not saying this specifically, what they are saying supports this. There are rumors that it was a language problem…a French coder misunderstood the difference between adult, erotica, and sexuality and selected the wrong nodes to filter.
I just got this e-mail from a complaint I sent them:
—–
Hello,
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…
—–
‘Glitch’ my ass. Amazon issued an official e-mail in which it made NO SUCH CLAIM. IN fact, the e-mail specifically stated that the action was OFFICIAL COMPANY POLICY. To now backtrack because they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar is somewhat suspicious.
Not to mention the ‘lines of code’ have been looked at by other hackers and pronounced insufficient to do what was claimed.
Sorry. Amazon.com has lost this former paying customer’s near 41000 a year on books and other media. There are other online retailers with the same content but less concern over the bigoted belief systems of some few of their customers.
THEY will get my online business from now on.
The hacker story was not plausible and has in fact already been debunked.
As of now the situation is still such that the first thing that shows up when you search “homosexuality” in Amazon.com is “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality”. Amazon has not commented the matter except by saying it is a “glitch”.
If it was a hacker — and why did Amazon not say this first instead of claiming it knew what it was doing and then that it was a glitch in its own system? — do I REALLY want those people to have my credit card number? Maybe not so much!