Due to Amazon’s apparent new censorship policy, which includes de-listing books with LBGT content as “adult” and inappropriate, we have temporarily disabled our affiliate links. We ask that you read up on the issue and think before making any purchases from Amazon, through us or otherwise, until the rankings and search capabilities are restored and an apology is tendered to the authors affected.
A company which censors non-explicit LBGT content, including academic histories and biographies (”Heather Has Two Mommies” is suddenly erotica?) while continuing to openly promote explicit heterosexual pornography (Playboy Centerfolds isn’t erotica?) is a company that we cannot morally support.
You can read more here: Open Letter To Amazon
And here: Ed Rants
And here: Mark Probst: “Amazon Follies”
Thank you.
That is just really sad – thanks for letting us know.
It’s kinda funny, because I often use used Amazon.com to purchase Yaoi (I wouldn’t complain if that got marked explicit). Still, I use used them for a ton of other things too.
I hope they see the light soon.
*tsk, tsk* It’s interesting how some companies choose to view the world morally. Well, I guess the best some of us can do is sit back and watch it play out. Maybe they’ll see the light and return to normal. And good on you guys on your decision. And thank you for letting us know.
Amazon’s calling it a “glitch” now, and– hopefully– correcting it.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/04/amazon-responds-to-adult-queries-blames-a-glitch.html
(I’m wondering if some “Real True Christian”– to use Fred Clark’s pungent phrase– decided to “fix” their database.)
I’ve never been a big fan of Amazon anyway, but this seems the right thing for them to do. If you allow books with sexual conduct, next thing ya know, there will be kissing on “Doctor Who”.
Sorry, I added a tag with “/sarcasm” at the end, but the Wordpress HTML filter caught that.
Anyway, my comments above were meant to be taken with a cube of sodium chloride.
Up until Wednesday, I worked for Amazon.co.uk
All the “adult themed” books and DVDs etc. were strategically placed in front of a manager’s desk, and yet they STILL went missing.
That’s a bit… fascistic. And also hypocritical. They seem to disagree with the books, yet are willing to still take your money for them.
Brandi: Unfortunately for Amazon, authors were receiving ‘your book has been delisted due to adult content’ letters as early as February, so it’s unlikely to be a glitch. They just got caught with their pants down when the story broke across Twitter and the social networking sites (I saw it last night on LiveJournal) yesterday.
Craig Seymour got delisted in February, and Mark Probst posted the text of the letter of explanation he received when he enquired about his own delisting.
Jezebel.com’s got an excellent summary, and partial comparative listing of effected and uneffected titles.
Meta_writer appears to have a complete listing of
censoredglitched books.Hrrm. Any problems with Barnes & Noble? I tend to prefer their site anyway, and I can even go to a store when I’m in Des Moines.
May I suggest instead of directing people to amazon that you direct, at least your American fans to indie bound books? These are independent bookstores across the nation. They will direct you to a store near you. You can order online from them too. http://www.indiebound.org/
Good for you for standing up to these fascists! I will definitely think twice before buying from amazon now!
musicdragon: our reason for the affiliation was far more mercenary than not; if Amazon.com does not apologize, we’ll look for another affiliate program that we can support that would be of interest to our readers and give us a percentage of sales.
Naked Bunny: Not sure, but if Amazon stands by their change in policy, we’ll be researching other options for sure.
So… will the ads now be from EBay?
I try not to order things from Amazon anyway, if only because their shipping has not struck a good chord with me (I’m sorry, it should not take five months to ship one book to my house). Now I’m even less interested in them. On the plus side, it should be interesting to watch if Jon Steward or Stephen Colbert get a hold of this.
forgive me but what is LBGT content?
LBGT (sometimes seen as LBGTQ) stands for “Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay and Transgender” (or ‘Transpersons’ to include Transvestism). Basically, anything and everything to do with Queer history, sociology, sexuality, self-discovery and self-identification.
I suspect their intentions were to protect sensitive eyes from “adult” content, but deciding what is “adult” seems to be problematic. From what I understand, not only LBGT subjects, but also romance novels and classics like “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” were affected, while Playboy and more mainstream novels with explicit content (e.g. Harold Robbins) were not. I’m sure with all this negative publicity, this policy will be reviewed. You and others like you withdrawing your links to Amazon also sends a message. Congratulations for sticking to your principles.
question: does this have anything to do with my inability to access this site for the past couple of days?
I can’t imagine how. I removed the amazon.com affiliate links at around 11 pm last night. There were a few glitches experienced by people who had cache issues on their own computers, but everything was working for everyone who contacted me by late morning today.
It looks like books being flagged as “adult” by users is what causes the delisting. And some user decided to take advantage of this and run scripts to mark LBGT books as adult in mass. Someone being able to do that would be the “glitch”
http://community.livejournal.com/brutal_honesty/3168992.html
That guy’s a net troll out to make a name for himself – that claim’s been debunked in a couple of places already.
The running theory – and most plausible to my mind so far – is that it was a conflation of old programming (’create way to remove hardcore smut from front page’) with someone taking a shortcut (’flag everything related to ’sex’ as ‘hardcore’ so I don’t have to do it manually’). At least that’s what I’m hoping it’ll turn out to be; it’s a lot me palatable than the idea that Amazon has caved in to pressure from Focus on the Family and other religious right fundamentalist groups.
Right on Rich n’ Hilary, Fight the Nazis/Amazon.com!
Ah Amazon, you fools, you have now not only got all LGBT mad at you, you have incurred the Wrath of every Whovian worth his sonic
JMHO, doesn’t sound like Amazon’s caved to anything but human carelessness.
Quote from an (ex?) Amazon employee:
That doesn’t completely explain why books about straight pornography were unaffected, but Daisey says “the Amazon [editing] system is mostly hand-built, and often super idiosyncratic, very Millennium Falcon meets Battlestar Galactica.”
Suspect he’s not too far off there. I *could* have found the thought of a hacker credible-wonder how many larger websites like Amazon there are, where the coding is all but duct-taped together?
Amazon made a statement to Ars Technica today about the issue, describing it as “an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error.” They claim it’s being fixed, and I’m reserving judgment until I see what shakes out tomorrow. With any luck, that’ll be proven to reasonable satisfaction, and we can go back to business as usual. I don’t like believing the worst of people, even large corporations.
I read someone’s comment that they removed all of their credit cards and emptied their shopping cart on Amazon. They also sent a nice adult note saying they were appalled at the fact Amazon was saying it was for ‘family friendly’ content. To me, ‘family friendly’ is ANY kind of family, AND if it were to protect families, they would have GOTTEN RID OF THE PORN BOOKS! If I were that person (I am respecting them by keeping them anonymous) I would have done the same thing, except for the note. I would have put, “I RESENT YOUR NEW POLICY or “glitch” AND THEREFORE I AM REMOVING MY LINKS TO THIS SITE! GOODBYE, I am going to wait another day, and if it is fixed then I will replace my information and resume buying from you, BUT IF IT HASN’T BEEN AND YOU HAVE NOT APOLOGIZED TO THE AUTHORS THAT THIS HAS AFFECTED, I WILL GO BUY MY BOOKS AT BARNES&NOBLE and/or other bookstores online”
sorry about the rant Rich, I want people to know how strongly I feel.
P.S. They did not remove the books themselves, they removed the ranking on the Amazon best selling list for any book tagged with ‘gay’. This is hurting the authors because some publishers will check Amazon to see what books they should make more copies of. If it weren’t hurting the authors, I wouldn’t feel so strongly, but COME ON Amazon is ignoring the fact that naked women are “adult content!!!”
if this is just a hacker or a glitch, then I apologize to Amazon, but I sincerely doubt it.
(again, sorry about the rant!)
sorry, Amazon just sent an email and apologized, so I am SOO sorry!
John Scalzi has a great post on the AmazonFail thing:
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/04/14/amazonfail-followup/
Hey, this is a dumb question, but…
They recently had an article where a hacker is taking “credit” for removing the questionable books from amazon.com. I guess Amazon is putting them back on now. Does that kinda sorta change things?
a.
Anita: The hacker is a fraud, Amazon has admitted to a massive system error created by one of their own programmers, and I’ve been working on the house all day. When I get more than 30 seconds in a row at the computer tonight, I’ll put up a thing and reinstate the ads.
Oh for God’s sake…actually Scalzi summed up my own thoughts on the matter pretty well. No need to expand on that.
I’m glad Amazon apologized, but I think they should be more careful.
You guys are really cool for not putting up with that. Just wanted to say that.
I never buy anything from Amazon, or the internet in general, but after this I probably won’t buy from them in the future, even if they did go back on this whole thing.