This seems to be happening to some hetero books marked as "erotica" as well, but not to Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds (Hardcover), hetero romance with sexually explicit scenes and various other things that seem pretty "adult" to me.
So, Playboy Centerfolds keep their sales rankings, but the children's book Heather Has Two Mommies does not.
This effectively keeps stories with gay or lesbian characters from getting recognition for their sales. I could see limiting the visibility of erotica or sexually explicit materials, maybe, but this isn't doing that -- it's just trying to bury the gay.
This makes me grumpy.
Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
That is annoying. It's bad enough that they are selling To Train Up A Child (Which should be called how to abuse and torment your children.) and that Helpmeet book (Which should be called how to end up in an abusive relationship) And they kept deleting my reviews of Ezzo and Dobson.
If they keep that up, I may have to use some other ordering service.
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posted
Right now searches for "homosexuality" bring up anti-gay material.
I suspect that someone at Amazon changed an algorithm somewhere and didn't know it would snowball, and I seriously hope that it gets cleared up with an apology tomorrow morning.
posted
Is Amazon the one that also would say "Did you mean Adoption?" when you searched for Abortion (but didn't recommend Abortion when you said Adoption)
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How interesting. I just looked up Torchwood, to see if the GLBT-ban applies to dvd - apparently not. So watching two men kiss is okay, but reading about it is not? Weird.
ETA - Oh and Chris, I'm with you on getting Breaking Dawn de-ranked. I far prefer my 'love' scenes without the bruises, thanks. That's so much more important than whether said love is between two men, women, or one of each.
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Amazon Rank is a Google Bomb, which I think is awesome. Instead of complaining to email bots, we can actually embarrass the folks. May not be much, but it IS rather satisfying.
Blame the winsome wenches at Smart Beeyotches(cleaned up because I didn't know if the profanity filter would censor their real site name -- it's a romance novel and erotica review site).
Here is an extensive list of books stripped of their sales ranking that are not erotica, and many don't have sex scenes, just characters in gay relationships.
Apparently, only the US and Canada sites are currently affected.
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I believe it is a Portland, Oregon store with a web presence. I'm sure there are others -- please share yours. Posts: 9293 | Registered: Aug 2000
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posted
According to Publishers Weekly, Amazon has said it was a glitch, not a new policy, and is being fixed.
In the meantime: Rowling has said that Dumbledore was gay, so let's get those highly profitable books properly tagged so Amazon can do the right thing.
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Its funny, this whole drama makes me want to go book shopping. And now I even have a prepared list of titles!
Some Barnes and Noble coworkers at other stores have already told me that the newest titles are prominantely displayed on their "New Arrival" table.
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Just tweeted: Gonna be hilarious tomorrow to see everyone's automatic Amazon recommendations after we've been searching for gay books all day.
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Hey, when I went to amazon just now and typed "gay" in the search engine it totally just brought up gay porn on dvd! But "homosexual" still just brings up textbooks.
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It's still not fixed (not that I expected it to be too quickly, even if it wasn't a glitch, they'll still have to change a lot of code). They certainly seem to be trying to avoid saying anything about it though. I can't find anything on their site about the problem "glitch" or otherwise. I never shop through them anyway, since they don't give Upromise rewards or ebates or mr. rebates or anything like that. If I buy a book online I go through a seller that will give me the credit back.
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Well, a side-by side comparison of the tags on books seems to indicate that things tagged as gay or lesbian were de-ranked along with things tagged erotica. This explains why the tame-by-contemporary-standards Lady Chatterly's Lover was de-ranked but Laurell K. Hamilton's last... I can't remember the title but I mentally dubbed it Boring Threesome Marathon... was not. Chatterly had the "erotica" tag, but none of the LKH stuff does, even though the distinction is purely semantic where her recent stuff is concerned.
That also explains the random de-ranking of one edition of a book, but not others (John Barrowman's biography hardcover and paper back-- one was de-ranked but not the other, and the one that was de-ranked had the "gay" tag).
It probably is a glitch of some sort, or the mistake of some over-zealous person who didn't know what they were doing. However, I will reserve judgment until I see how it is handled. I don't think anything short of restoring all sales ranks will satisfy me, though. Otherwise, it's too subjective.
It's a UK site, but does free worldwide delivery. Plus it has an almost hypnotic Watch People Shop feature. While i was there, I saw someone in France buy French Women Don't Get Fat, which amused me greatly.
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quote: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).
posted
How about a series of checkboxes in their search criteria...
I'm ok with searching for: [X] Gay stuff [ ] Religious stuff/Hate groups
or whatever else might be offensive to someone.
Probably what happened was, some religious nutjobs complained with the "but what about the CHILDREN" line and they were so worked up that kids might be exposed to teh ghey (cuz ya know, exposing kids to gay people would be bad because gays are bad because children might be exposed to them.) and Amazon thought "Well, jeez, there are tons of religious crazies out there and not nearly as many gay people. Let's placate the 'phobes and hope the gays don't notice."
Now we've noticed and Amazon is backing down.
Thing is though, if the fundies pitch a hissy what can Amazon do? If we get into dueling boycotts, the crazies win because there's so many more of them than us.
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I think that the fact that several authors were advised that they were de-ranked because their books were considered "adult" is as much the issue. Not that there wouldn't have been talk and conspiracy theories if they hadn't told authors that, but that it makes it seem unlikely to many people that it was an accident. Too many non "gay" books that should be listed as adult are still findable, and books like Heather Has Two Mommies were de-ranked for having "adult" content. Heather Has Two Mommies is a children's book for heaven's sake.
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That's unfair Pixiest. You can't lump all religious organizations into the same category. Several denominations, including the United Methodist Church, support equal civil rights for the GLBT community, even if they do not wish to marry them in religious services.
The United Methodist Church isn't alone in its support for civil rights for the GLBT community either, but I have to leave for work in 4 minutes and don't have time to look up the list. I believe it may be available through the HRC though.
Edit: Here is a link to the HRC page that give a non-comprehensive list of religious organizations supporting civil rights for GLBT members of the community.
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andi: it's true, there ARE good christians who take the words of Jesus, "love thy neighbor as thyself," seriously. Boots springs to mind.
But they are a minority. It took the bad ones a serious, expensive and united effort to push through their hate in a secular state like California.
Are you sure the UMC is tolerant? I seem to remember them defrocking someone for sanctifying two lesbians. I would have used the Episopalians (the American branch anyway) as a symbol for tolerance.
Pix
(Was raised Methodist)
Edit: Read the HRC page on the UMC. Looks like they're either playing both sides of the issue or are simply unsure where they stand. In any event, better than I thought. And certainly better than it was when I left the church.
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Pixiest: Then your opinion is utterly useless. Your bigotry has blinded you and you are living in a fantasy land.
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Worth reading. I'm fairly certain that the implication in the full comment is correct, that this is all some unintended consequence of a recent change to the algorithm that they use to detect adult material. Perhaps some undue weight on user reviews and comments (which may be anti-gay)?
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Seriously - if you automatically equate the two, then you have a tenuous grasp on reality. Since you seem in all other respects to have greater maturity and intellectual power than a seven-year-old, it must be your bigotry that is blinding you.
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mucus: That article makes sense to me. Especially since I know (knew? I guess it's been a while) someone who works at amazon. She said it's a great environment for people like us.
Plus it means I don't have to cancel any of my outstanding orders. (I use amazon just all the time...)
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: Pixiest: Then your opinion is utterly useless. Your bigotry has blinded you and you are living in a fantasy land.
katharina: somehow I doubt that is going to persuade Pixiest that she's wrong.
Pixiest feels extraordinarily passionate about this topic. You can't blast out that sort of fire with flames of your own. If you're not peddling hate, don't do it with disdain.
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kat: And your faith in your invisible sky wizard is firmly grounded in reality?
How is me calling religion a hate group someone more whacky than people of "faith" denying civil rights to an entire class of people via Constitutional Amendment?
You ARE a hate group! You mess with people who have never wronged you just because they're different from you.
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Do you even know what a hate group is? You don't, clearly, since you have such trouble identifying them.
You have all the nuance and knowledge of social groups and history as patio furniture. Even putting them in the same category proves that you aren't interested in improving Amazon's search nearly so much as attempting to push your own bigotry-laden world view on everyone else.
You can't even distinguish between different religions. You've lumped every single religion ever with all hate groups - if you can't see the problem with that, then your opinions are invalidated forever, because you've blinded yourself.
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From wikipedia: "A hate group is an organized group or movement that advocates hate, hostility, or violence towards members of a racial group, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation or other designated sector of society. "
I think I would categorize denying civil rights as both hate and hostility.
Please note, I have not sought to deny rights to any religious group. I simply applied the label of "Hate group."
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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Please note, adding that to all and every without any distingusing (leaving out the fact that you clearly can't identify a hate group anyway) means you don't care about any particular religion's beliefs, since they don't all believe the same thing.
Do you really think that ALL flavors of all religions teach the exact same thing? Or that your pet issue is the most defining issue for all religions?
It is your failure to see outside of your self-centered bubble that make you such a poor judge of this and a miserable search designer.
You can claim that Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia all you want - it doesn't make it true.
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kat: Just the majority. Since they're the ones that screwed us over in California so royally. Though I happen to know what your religion (and you in particular) believe. So while Unitarians and Episcopalians get a pass, you don't.
The rest of your post is a jumbled mess.
Lunch time! You get the last word, Pot.
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quote:Though I happen to know what your religion (and you in particular) believe.
Bullshit. You most certainly do not.
More of your blindness problems caused by your bigotry.
If you are ever interested in truth about people not yourself, there are places for you to learn. If you want to continue in your prejudiced Humpty Dumpty world, by all means, continue as you are.
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As I understand it, the Methodist Church and the Anglican/Episcopal Communion are not so much wavering as split. Whether they end up actually splitting as denominations is a hot question right now.
I think there are a lot of denominations that are in the "we are there in spirit but can't quite let go of that technicality yet" stage like the Presbyterians. More welcoming in practice than in official policy.
The UCC comes to mind first as supportive of GLBT rights.
Pixiest, thanks. I don't think that the conservative religious folks are that much more in the majority than the liberal ones, though. It is just that the liberal ones are not, for the most part, politically organized. The Religious Right is powerful politically because they got organized. That organization is being challenged, but it is slow work.
Posts: 11187 | Registered: Sep 2005
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Pixiest, I'm an atheist, and I would have to agree that you're unfairly judging religion here. Most Americans are religious to some degree, while only about half of Americans are opposed to gay marriage. And not all of those people actually care all that much, it's just a vague gut instinct as opposed to serious belief that they've thought about and acted on.
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Worth reading. I'm fairly certain that the implication in the full comment is correct, that this is all some unintended consequence of a recent change to the algorithm that they use to detect adult material. Perhaps some undue weight on user reviews and comments (which may be anti-gay)?
Another theory floating the 'nets is that someone figured out how to game their system, and deliberately did so over a holiday weekend for maximum effect.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: Do you really think that ALL flavors of all religions teach the exact same thing? Or that your pet issue is the most defining issue for all religions?
Kat, are you saying that your religion doesn't teach this? That it didn't throw its support behind Prop 8? Because if your religion did that, then arguing the point that not all religions did is a little on the sneaky side.
I'm Jewish. About 70 years ago, the government of Germany started taking away the rights of Jews for reasons that seemed reasonable to them. It started small and it escalated. If the government of Illinois or the US were to do the same, I would fight back. And unlike OSC and his threats to bring down a government that grants right to people, I would work to bring down a government that denies rights to me and mine by any means necessary.
Kvetching at Pix for some hyperbole in the face of a situation where people had rights removed for religious reasons shows a serious lack of proportion.
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