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Amazon: Hiding Feminists and Gay People - Blame France
Quid
Definitely not a bananaRegistered User regular
Definitely not a bananaRegistered User regular
So for those of you that don't read chat, Cat posted this.
Amazon.com (USA) search on "homosexuality"
Amazon.ca (Canada) search on "homosexuality"
WTF Amazon?
Edit: Amazon's corporate e-mail address
Essentially Amazon is delisting certain books it deems "adult". These books are still on Amazon, just significantly harder to find. Now this might not seem so bad at first to some people, but it turns out they're delisting books about feminism and homosexuality while leaving books about "curing" homosexuality and pornography alone. Also worth note that this is entirely on America's site. Canada's site has no such issue. For example:If you haven’t seen this story yet, it’s truly despicable. Amazon.com has been quietly delisting certain books they have deemed “adult”, which is a term they use to mean “offensive to the patriarchy”. (Apparently, sexists are children, an assessment I can deal with.) Amazon still sells the books, but they aren’t listed in sales ranking, aren’t being generated by the recommendations widget, and often don’t even come up when you search for them. And when I say that the barometer is how much the book buys into the assumption, “Women are equal to men and gays are equal to straight” and not the actual sexual content, I’m not joking. People are tallying up who is and isn’t victimized---feminists are dinged but pornographers aren’t; books about lesbian parenting and other non-sexual aspects of gay life are dinged, but books about how to “cure” homosexuality aren’t; Anais Nin is dinged, but Henry Miller isn’t. By removing these “adult” books, conservative books get more than their fair share of the searches, and now if you search for “homosexuality”, the first book you get is a guide on preventing your kids from being gay. (My advice: Don’t have kids and you don’t run that risk, homobigots.)
The offenses are being chronicled on Twitter, using the tag #amazonfail. It’s the number one trending topic on Twitter right now, with seemingly hundreds of tweets per minute speaking out about the censorship and chronicling the victims. You can read it here.
Many friends of Pandagon are victims. So far, Jessica Valenti’s seen a couple of books get de-listed (you can’t even pull up Full Frontal Feminism on a search for exactly that term), and Heather Corinna’s inclusive approach to adolescent sexuality has been de-listed, while more homophobic titles on the same subject are up. Trish Wilson has also been a casualty of the censorship. Anti-rape book Yes Means Yes is gone, and there’s even a book about preventing teen suicide that’s been de-listed. Here’s a list of the books. Playboy centerfolds and Girls Gone Wild are safe, even if depressed teens are less so.
I smell a right wing letter-writing campaign. I checked the websites of the usual suspects---AFA, Focus on Family, and CWA---but haven’t seen anything. But I would be shocked if Amazon weren’t reacting to an organized campaign from some right wing organization. If you have any ideas or tips about who could be behind this, please leave them in comments. Amazon’s never been an especially censor-happy or conservative organization (the CEO is a big time Democratic donor, which doesn’t mean “not a bigot”, but also makes this policy more surprising), so I would bet a good amount of money they’re getting pressured on this.
Amazon.com (USA) search on "homosexuality"
Amazon.ca (Canada) search on "homosexuality"
WTF Amazon?
Edit: Amazon's corporate e-mail address
Quid on
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I don't think I can do business with a company that sends that kind of message as a result of pandering to small minded people. My money doesn't fucking matter, and it's just a damn online bookstore. There's bigger problems in this country that are the cause of shit like this. But... I really don't know. That's just fucking vile.
Searches for "feminism" and "feminist" both yield pro-feminist books.
My guess is that someone just fucked up. or someone is screwing around.
https://twitter.com/Hooraydiation
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
you can still find titles if you're careful, but subject search results are very very circumscribed
the basic criteria seems to be that if a frat-boy stereotype would be grossed out by it, you're going to have trouble buying it.
We can only hope.
Those two searches are appalling.
Hrm. Who and how can we contact at Amazon to get this brought to light? I don't like the idea of something good on the internet being dragged down with this kind of bullshit.
I'm guessing this is either someone's idea of a joke, or a mid-level employee who is doing this without authority from the company.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970666737/
It looks like Feb. at least, from what I've read so far. So this has gone on several months now, quietly.
I really want to hear an explanation for this, but I'm betting on the 'conservative groups gaming the system' theory. Either through tagging or some sort of organized letter campaign or something.
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
Does that involve whippings with a large cane and splashing them with holy water to " drive out " the "heathen homodevils " ?
To be perfectly blunt, I'm more ashamed for shopping at a place that even sales such a book than I am at what they are doing with the rankings.
This is just about the best thing to do, yeah. I've already been bringing this to the attention of folks I know (one of the communities being full of homosexuals / lesbians).
The harder the rain, honey, the sweeter the sun.
The fact that all books that remain in the sales rankings are also the ones on Kindle doesn't encourage me
sent them an email too
NNID: Hakkekage
I really can't believe people would actually read (and apply) a book with the title "Preventing Homosexuality". This is seriously why some people might commit suicide over this issue. I'm totally with DOTS on this one and am writing Amazon about this. Hopefully they notice that I have over $200 worth of books in my shopping cart (yes, I have a problem with buying books...), not to mention the ridiculous amounts of stuff I've bought off of them in the past 2 or 3 years.
Done. This is terrible. I am linking this to everyone I know who even vaguely gives a crap.
LoL: failboattootoot
For the gay stuff, perhaps police officers, American Indian chiefs, cowboys, construction workers, military men, and leather men were having trouble.
They fucking better fix it, I don't want to have to go looking for another site to buy my robots. Before Amazon started carrying they were a pain in the ass to get and two of them never showed up.
Click help, then click contact us, then click the email tab. The order number field doesn't need to be filled.
LoL: failboattootoot
As much of a joke that could be, I'm shocked that some of my friends have taken to it.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2009/04/amazon-responds-to-adult-queries-blames-a-glitch.html
It sounds like they're already aware of the pressure they're about to get (or already are getting) and are 'fixing' the 'problem,' but as usual that isn't going to be enough. They know their explanation is bullshit and we're not going to get more from them I think.
Done (though I used the executive customer service email below). I had put in N/A for the order ID because I'm retarded and it didn't like that.
This is why my last paragraph said I wouldn't be shopping there until not only was the problem fixed, but a public explanation and apology was issued. I don't want this just to go away, I want to be sure the point has been made that we won't stand for it.