Amazon explains cataloging error that banished queer books to "adult" purgatory
More information on how Amazon came to misclassify over 50,000 books (including books about feminism, about gay and lesbian themes, etc) as "adult" and make them largely invisible to searchers. Turns out Patrick's theory was largely correct -- an employee in France filled in a field incorrectly and clobbered the listings for 50,000 items.
This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.Amazon begins to re-rank affected 'adult' books; theories swirl [UPDATED] (via Lisa Gold)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.
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#amazonfail or, as I've taken to calling it, "Don't Ask, Don't Sell."
Liar liar pants on fire, Amazon.
See if I order anything from you guys again. I'm sure B&N, DeepDiscount, and my lovely Australian sellers TheNile and SeekBooks will appreciate the business, and the postage is cheaper anyway. Cheers!
I could have done the same mistake
As a Swede, if I worked for an American company and they ordered me to remove "adult", "offensive" or simply "not suitable for kids" content, I could have done the same mistake. What Americans see as inappropriate is an enigma. We talk about the same country that changed the content of Pippi Longstocking, because it was seen as inappropriate. Something like that is simply baffling to an outsider. The most ridiculous thing the American publisher changed was her age, arguing that no small kid should be allowed to behave like that. The French publisher censored parts of the Pippi Longstocking book when it was first published in the 40's and also changed her age, but at least they didn't change anything in the remaining content and they didn't continue to do the same in prints today.
Actually #1 & 2, Amazon is just like any other company, they're not without stupid low level employee mistakes that results in huge fuckups. The nice thing about Amazon is they'll admit their faults and will actually fix it. If this was some other big name company, they probably won't even admit faults, let alone fixing anything, just to make themselves look good (when it doesn't).
A translation error, eh? I find that hard to believe. Being French myself, I know full well that "adulte", the French equivalent of English "adult", doesn't mean "gay", "queer" or "GLBTQ". It means "with strong sexual content", period. Even if one French speaking employee at Amazon.fr f*cked up last week, it wouldn't explain why books such as Heather Has Two Mommies were unranked. Or why it began in February...
BTW, is it the 2nd or 3rd explanation given by Amazon?
#4: Nobody's said translation error. All that's been said is that somebody working on Amazon.fr screwed up. The rumour is that they confused "sexuality" -- which would cover GLBT as well as the other non-GLBT titles that got hit (given that it didn't just affect GLBT-related books, the problem was just first noted on a large-scale with regards to those books) -- with "sex", and when they made the change clobbered the database.
Now, as for the explanations: they've only given one explanation for the recent problem, which was "glitch" -- which to me sounds like "We're not sure exactly what happened, but it wasn't supposed to -- quick, say something until we can figure it out." (As a note: people inside Amazon I have heard from aren't happy that that's the line they were given to go with.)
Now, what did I mean by only one explanation? Well, based on what these same people have said, the February thing is something slightly different. Amazon does have a system for hiding adult-content books from showing up when you're not directly searching for them. The problem is that sometimes a book gets marked as adult-content when it is not. What happens then is somebody contacts Amazon and complains that it's not adult-content, the book gets flagged for review, and eventually somebody looks into it. If it's not adult-content then the database flag identifying it as such gets turned off. Given the description of what happened in February, this explanation fits. (And could be nothing more than a problem where the single book got automatically flagged based on meta-information provided, or could be the result of the fact that the database-clobbering actually happened far further in the past than anybody initially realised.)
so it wasn't this guy?
i'm confused.
Never attribute to conspiracy what can be explained by simple incompetence.
Be mad if you want, but I find this explanation quite plausible. (Also, I know someone who works for Amazon and he explained this before Amazon announced it, and I am inclined to believe him.)
#5, jamesgyre:
Nope. It was figured out that that guy was just trolling for attention shortly after he posted his story. His posted commands don't do what he claims they do, and even if they did his explanation would only explain the GLBT books that got hit, not the myriad others that did.
The "they took the report option off because of me, that's why you can't find it anymore" was a nice touch though.
@4
So, would it be impossible for a French speaking employee to catalog the titles as adult intentionally without it being an approved Amazon policy?
Given how quickly Amazon is reversing the changes now that they've been called out on it, I'm inclined to think that regardless of how it happened, it probably wasn't a corporate decision to re-classify the books this way. Amazon has always benefited from making less mainstream material easily (and relatively anonymously) available to it's customers and I really don't see this being something they would change intentionally.
If you think about it, Amazon benefits from making all of those materials readily available to interested parties. Up until now I've never seen anything that would make me think that the powers that be at Amazon exercise any sort of editorial control over search results so even if someone did this intentionally, I suspect Amazon as a company wouldn't have approved of it and this is why they're scrambling to fix the issue and write if off as a mistake.
http://www.amazon.com/Futurama-Rocket-Wind-Gender-Bender/dp/B000063XUY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=toys-and-games&qid=1239603479&sr=8-1 demonstrates that Amazon was and is not afraid to sell merchandise which ridicules LGBTs. Not the only item, either.
#8, DragonVPM: "If you think about it, Amazon benefits from making all of those materials readily available to interested parties."
That's the thing made me question the theories that Amazon was deliberately hiding the books because of some anti-gay agenda: how would it actually benefit them as a company?
OK, so such a theoretical action might get them some good press from the "gays are unnatural"-crowd, but would the potential from that offset the negative impact to their revenue stream from making the books less readily available as well as ticking off a significant segment of the population?
Given that several other large companies have been through boycotts for being "too gay-friendly" (see: Disney, Microsoft) with no ill-effects that anyone can identify, I doubt that such a small yet vocal minority would be worthwhile kowtowing to if the result is alienating a larger group. (By small yet vocal minority I mean the "I won't buy anything from you as long as you're showing those evil pro-gay books"-crowd.)
People get so offended so easily nowadays. I say good riddance to customers that freak out this easily.
I am a fairly cynical person but readily accept Amazon's explanation here. It's rational, possible, and even likely. I also think the twitterverse type overreaction was educational.
Amazon's response seems reasonable, and though it took them awhile to respond (a lot can be said on the Internet in one day), there are likely good reasons for that. First they need to track down the problem, then they need to explain it in just enough detail that people will accept that they've answered the question. In the mean time, they don't dare say much of anything, for fear of saying something that isn't true or for looking like they don't know what happens in their systems. Frankly, I'm happy to see them apologize and take responsibility for the error once they figured it out; most companies pass off it as one of those things that just happens.
The actual error seems quite plausable. While many people may expect large companies to have strict security, well-defined job roles, and various other measures to protect against accident/abuse, the fact is these systems are often hacked together just well enough to remain running. There are probably dozens of employees who could have done this intentionally and hundreds more that could have done it accidentally. After all, they are just items in a database. An error communicating what "adult" means between management and the catalogers, or what the system should do with those books, could easily lead to this. Or a quick SQL query to add the "adult" tag to a whole range of books could have picked up more than was intended. So many little mistakes could lead to this situation.
If nothing else, this is a textbook example of a) why security and separation of duties are so important in large systems, and b) how important fast, accurate, and sufficient PR is in the Internet age.
Hmm, seems like too many explanations for a major fuckup.
And Dculberson @10: It's much easy to get offended when you've been targeted with hatred, violence or the notion that you are morally, ethically or spiritually corrupt. It's very easy to get defensive when you are something that people might not just accept, when your state of being actually involves a fight to be recognised, or at least not to be dismissed or discriminated against.
Like race, sexuality can be very touchy. If you'd experienced one iota of the struggle many people went through to proudly say they are not straight them you might understand. And if you have, then i'm surprised you're so keen to dismiss this as people just getting enraged for the sake of it, or because it's "easy".
It is not easy, no sir.
Oh - for the raging debate about the Twitterers' role and the.. measuredness of the response.
As superb as the groundswell of support was, the reclaiming of the term "twit" seems to be more than appropriate. And although the definition has been contextually altered, I think a twit is still a twit. Just in 140 characters.
So, I'm supposed to feel better that Amazon has employees making wide-scale changes to their production site with neither review nor oversight? And that these changes propagate to all versions of the site, again with neither review nor oversight?
That kind of incompetence is plenty good reason to take my business elsewhere.
I think the twitstorm would have been a lot less vehement had they not just attributed it to a "glitch" which we are all used to being used when the company got caught doing something they shouldn't have.
The PR flack that put it out with that term should be sent back to the proofreading department until she learns to treat the 'net as an actual group of intelligent people and not the great unwashed to be brushed off.
They were so willing to admit that they screwed up, why not just put that out first? They had to have had a clue it was their own fault? Instead of "glitch" put out a release that says "Hey, someone screwed the database big time, we've got a bunch of people working on it, sorry!! In the meantime look for an extra %10 off of all 57,000 effected books next week!"
#14, legotech:
The Amazon CS reps are supposedly not too happy with the fact that "glitch" was given as the initial explanation. The thing is, once that was out there it was a damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario: you keep saying glitch, and people get upset because the explanation is not very descriptive; you change the explanation and you get people complaining that they can't keep their story straight. (Look at the comments on this very article and there are people saying as much.)
That said, chances are good when that explanation was first advanced they actually had no idea other than "something is happening that's not supposed to be" -- it takes a while to find the root cause of any issue in a system the size of Amazon's, and chances are good someone got sent out to do damage control before they had found the problem and with little to no information on what it might be. And, as such, we get the word glitch used: something went wrong but we don't yet know what or why. (I've heard it used quite a bit in that manner in the past: something went wrong; we don't know what caused it but we've never seen it before.)
I'm still not feeling warm fuzzies here.
There is more going on and I'm probably not coming back until I start feeling better about this (and I spend a rather large amount of cash with Amazon).
Some of the materials I buy are adult and are inappropriate for kids - I still want to buy them and should be able to. But the fact that exact title matches don't work for materials that are adult still strikes me as messed up.
I ended up buying a number of books elsewhere and got them used because I didn't find them on Amazon and I assumed they didn't carry them and that they were out of print. Now it turns out they carry new copies - and I could have bought them and supported the authors (which I like to do).
Ok, so they mis-cataloged stuff - accidents happen. But the fact that all of the books I've been involved in recently (about 7 titles where I wrote a section, was a model, or was interviewed) disappeared from the main search is a big enough issue for me to look to take my business else. Some were goofs were mislabeling g-rated books on queer music, but others are clearly adult.
Still, while they might be adult, typing in the exact title or exact title and author should return them, even if they talk about BDSM or have erotic photos. I shouldn't have to know to pick the book drop down to get results back. That is bizarre and arbitrary and not the way a UI for a search should be designed.
Bad UI design in the name of protecting kids is a problem for me. It makes it hard to buy materials, but ultimately doesn't stop kids from finding this stuff if they want to. Two goals fail here: 1) you miss out on chances to sell a book, and 2) you don't actually prevent kids from seeing these book listings.
Amazon is not telling much truth. They are testing something. More is coming.
This playing around with 'adult' classifications and whether they show up in search results or where they show up in search results is dangerous and will get worse. Keep watching them. But I would immediately move away from Amazon to another online book supplier. Without question.
Well, at least the outrage worked. Whatever negative things one can say about the critical thinking of the twitter community- I think the tool mobilized a lot of people to make amazon know that what was going on was unacceptable.
For those of you that are complaining about how "people get so offended so easily"- that's probably because they are vulnerable in a way that you have difficulty relating to.
I think this was a real study in bad PR. Amazon could have really stopped the avalanche of anger by having someone blogging and twittering updates as they came along- and I really don't think that "changing the story" would have bothered people in those formats. You expect a consistent message with a "front stage" medium like a press release- twitter and blogs are much more realtime and casual, and the same expectations are not applied.
What I thought was so odd about the livejournal "hacker" taking credit for it was how many people just seemed to WANT to believe, and took schadenfraud from it. I wasn't really certain why people's reactions were supposed to be dismissed just because they had been trolled (whatever the reason- amazon.com was doing some pretty unacceptable things). It IS wonderfully ironic that the people who seemed most eager to laugh at others for being trolled were, in fact, the ones that got trolled.
#18, allen:
At the risk of flooding this thread with too many responses from me: I think people wanted it to be someone gaming the Amazon system as that means there was no possibility of malicious intent (as many people were claiming was the case) or stupidity/error (as seems to actually have been the case) on Amazon's part. If that had been the cause then it would have just been an automated system being abused past its expected design limits until it started doing things it wasn't supposed to.
Then, of course, there's just the people who like to see any big entity brought low/embarrassed by a single person finding a way of gaming the system for their own ends.
(That all said: I won't accuse anyone of being easily upset as I understand why they would be. My only wish would be that people have some patience and wait for an official response from somebody other than an underpaid, overworked, and likely woefully ill-informed customer service drone before immediately jumping to the "there's no other explanation but malice!" conclusion. I know, I'm essentially wishing for the Earth to stop spinning around the Sun; a guy can dream though, can't he?)
No no no! It's not a mistake by one incompetent employee! It's a deliberate conspiracy (that makes no rational sense -- but conspiracies never do of course! Then they'd be easy to spot!) like the Kennedy Assassination, 9-11, or Dollhouse getting canceled: FOX News is behind it all! Or the Republicans.
Wait, no, it's probably the Lizards. The Lizards are the ones who will not be blamed for nothing.
Charles: The idiocy in taking a CSRs explanation` over a long weekend (Easter, no less) the way so many did is what gets me.
But as many have pointed out, a day (weekend, weekday, public holiday, whatever) on the net is a long time, a lot can be said and PR people should be on stand-by to deal with this.
The fact that they weren't, and took so long to response makes me more willing to accept the extended "glitch" response we're now getting.
If this was planned they'd have an army of PR ready to defend the position they (Amazon) has assumed. So yeah, they do get the benefit of my doubt. Even if only because the other option is so horrid and untenable that I refuse to accept that any company in this day and age would hold such strong beliefs, or be willing to act upon them in this way.
Although... those categories mentioned seem to be limited enough in scope, you'd think a few hetero books would've been snagged. And maybe they were, but went unnoticed. I just don't know what to believe.
all Amazon has to do now is leave the apology up, fix the software and make a sizable donation to gay rights organizations while at the same time stopping giving money to the republicans (a grand to santorum??)
#21, J France: There were some hetero books snagged, though I'm afraid I have no titles off the top of my head save Lady Chatterley's Lover — which was only occasionally delisted depending on what categories the publisher had supplied in the metadata for their edition.
There were also some feminist books, and some sex-related books that dealt with sex for those with physical disabilities that were hit by the problem. The titles of these didn't stick in my head though.
I think the point might be getting missed. The very simple fact of the matter is that Amazon is playing with fields and product labels in the database. They are quite clearly experimenting with classifying and filtering certain books as 'adult' and making them behave differently in searches. The very existence of the field that an Amazon employee entered an incorrect value into should tell us that Amazon is building and adjusting a structure for filtering.
What was the value that this mysterious employee in France entered? I'm extremely curious. Was it the word 'sex?' Was it 'sexuality?' Was it 'homo?' Also, what is the field name he or she entered it into?
Amazon is experimenting and the experiment is aimed at sorting books based on their contents.
Imagine a bookstore that hid all the books it decided were adult themed and put them on a back shelf like DVD stores do with adult movies.
@ #23: They apparently screwed up the listings for 50,000+ books covering a wide range of topics, not just those covering gay and lesbian themes.
@ people-freaking-out-about-Amazon's-evil-master-plan-to-attack-people-in-alternative-lifestyles: I'm sorry folks, but if you look at the net result of this sort of fiasco, you have a large retailer publicly stating that they screwed up and that they never intended to cause this problem with the books in question. They're basically saying there's nothing wrong with those books and that THEY made a mistake. Think about that for a moment. Do you know what Amazon would need to do if they really wanted to screw with gay, kinky, atheist, etc... groups? Stop selling the books. They wouldn't need to engage in complicated shenanigans with rankings and listings etc... They could just delete them from their database and call it a day. They could do that and ignore any complaints from folks who were upset by this and there's not a whole lot we could do to them short of shopping somewhere else (and you'd probably see their profits react not unlike Wal-Mart's do when people get up in arms over their latest evil deed).
Regardless of what those of us who are glued to our keyboards may think, the world does not revolve around twitter and blogs and a day is really not an unusual turn around time to address and correct this sort of screw-up. The only thing we accomplish by attacking Amazon over and over even after they've apologized and are working to undo the problem is to make online communities look like a bunch of hysterical reactionaries that can't be reasoned with and that's not a good place to be.
#25, DragonVPM: They apparently screwed up the listings for 50,000+ books covering a wide range of topics, not just those covering gay and lesbian themes.
I thought that's what I was trying to say. (I was merely giving examples of ones where I specifically knew they had been affected.)
Actually, I read erotic fiction for women, and there were a ton of books affected by this. Easter Sunday, my only day off, I went on Amazon to purchase a book. It was like the author dropped off the face of the planet. So I looked up another, and another. If you typed in homosexuality at that time, the book that immediately came up was: "A Parents Guide To Preventing Homosexuality". I found it very disturbing, that that book had not fallen under the censorship glitch as well. It's not something I'd leave lying around in front of my son either.
#27 You did, but I thought it would be helpful to throw out the 50,000 number again since several people seemed to fixate on not being able to find a handful of books.
Eventually I'd be curious to see statistics on what percentage of books were from various categories and what percentage of the total books available in those categories were affected. For all we know the highest percentage of books affected could have been bona fide photography books with artistic nudes in them.
#31, Anonymous: "If you typed in homosexuality at that time, the book that immediately came up was: "A Parents Guide To Preventing Homosexuality". I found it very disturbing, that that book had not fallen under the censorship glitch as well."
Assuming the filtering on metadata categories explanation is true, then there's a very simple explanation: take a look at the categories supplied by the publisher for that book. Not a single one mentions gay & lesbian, sexual orientation, sexual-preference, or anything other than the most generic categories possible: sociology, general parenting, religion & spirituality. There's nothing in them that gives you any idea as to the book's focus on homosexuality, hence the likely reason why it didn't get hit.
@13
"People get so offended so easily nowadays. I say good riddance to customers that freak out this easily.
I am a fairly cynical person"
most stereotypical privileged-white-internet-male-who-likes-to-consider-himself-a-rationalist-cynic post ever
I find this interesting -
from - americablog.com
"except then why did Amazon say it was caused by a glitch, and why did Amazon reportedly write to one blogger and say the move was intentionally done because the gay literature in question was deemed "adult" in nature?
- and as yet unexplained.
#35, m2key:
It's easily explained:
1. Why did Amazon say it was caused by a glitch? Because they clearly were using glitch to mean "something that wasn't supposed to happen, but which we have yet to determine the exact nature of the error as well as the extent of its consequences -- until we have more information, 'glitch'".
2. Why did Amazon reportedly write to one blogger and say that the move was intentionally done? There are two possible answers I see here:
i) They hit a customer service rep who wasn't certain what's going on and therefore simply gave a stock answer. There is undoubtedly an adult flag that's supposed to make sure that literature of an actual adult nature doesn't show up on searches for children's books etc., and the CSR not knowing exactly what was going on gave what they thought was the most appropriate answer from the script. (Somebody on another blog, possibly Making Light, wrote a great explanation of what likely happened if this is the case. It went something like this: the author contacted Amazon saying "Why is my book not showing a sales rank?". The customer service rep looked up the book and saw that its entry was flagged as adult content, so they gave the stock answer: "It's [marked as] adult content.")
ii) The case that's almost always brought up with regards to this statement comes from a problem that was reported to Amazon in late-January/early-February and which became fixed later in February -- which means that somebody went in and turned the "adult" flag off on that particular book. As I mentioned in post #4 (disregard that it's Anonymous), I have been told by an Amazon employee that this is pretty much exactly how the system is supposed to work
Some books are invariably going to end up accidentally flagged as adult even disregarding this giant SNAFU, so if somebody contacts Amazon complaining that the flag should not be set then the entry is marked for review. If upon review it's found that the flag isn't appropriate, then the adult-flag is removed and the sales-rank reappears.
So imagine an 8-year old child wandering into a bookstore. Walking down the aisles. Between shelves. And on a shelf sits a book called 'Sons and Lovers.' Or 'The Kama Sutra.' Do the store employees race around pulling these books off the shelves to protect the dear sweet innocence of our wandering 8-year old?
If they did, we'd call them morons, wouldn't we?
Flagging books as 'adult' at Amazon? Yes, of course our children must be protected from literature. That's how they'll grow up able to elect the next George W. Bush. Right? Keep em scared. Keep em dumb.
I freely and enthusiastically hurl the 'moron' epithet directly into the face of Mr. Jeff Bezos. There's your primary idiot in this censorship mess.
The guy just doesn't give a damn about books.
http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/amazonrank/
Perfect. Perfect. That's it totally.
#37, Alessandro Cima:
Given the tone of your post, I'm assuming you're replying to me. If not, feel free to ignore this.
Anyway, you seem to be confusing a possible explanation of what happened with a belief that the filter should be there in the first place. Re-read what I wrote: there's nothing there about whether or not a filter as it was likely supposed to work should exist in the first place. I just said that it's clear that one exists.
That said, I don't know about your local bookstores, but all the ones here nicely isolate the children's section of the store so that once you're in the children's section you can't see any other books unless you leave the children's section. This includes both the large chains and the small locally-owned independents. (And most also tend to stick the erotica, sex guides, etc. in back corners. You have to pretty much be wanting to browse through them in order to see them.)
The guy just doesn't give a damn about books.
What ever made you think he did in the first place? He's just a businessman, and as such all actions should be viewed through the filter of "What will this likely do to sales?"
#40,
Charles H. I actually wasn't replying to you, but your points are interesting and I would certainly enjoy replying.
My tone is often a bit testy or blunt but don't take it the wrong way. I'm remarkably uncivilized but I'm improving slowly.
I agree with you that the filter exists. I am positive beyond any doubt whatsoever that we have witnessed a slightly awkward test of a system that Amazon fully intends to use.
And yes, I know most stores do the children's section thing. And that's fine. Sort of. Actually a bit on the silly side. I've run a kids literature site for years and to this day feel like an ungainly idiot in a children's section at a Barnes & Noble. My point is that children are not protected from the 'adult' content in books at most bookstores. They are free to leave the children's section and wander. There are no restrictions on a child picking up the Kama Sutra and reading it. Nor should there be. Children should be free to read whatever they are capable of reading. Of course I would not send them into the adult photo mags. I'm talking about books and literature. We get into a seriously bad place when we start protecting children from grown-up books. I don't approve of protected web sites for children and I don't approve of protected literary environments.
I think Amazon has done a very bad thing here and I don't think they are telling the truth. It's a very slippery slope they are on and I'm not interesting in doing business with such a company any more.
As for your comment about Bezos being just a businessman. Well, no. I would expect any person who opened a web site for selling books to actually love books. If he doesn't like the books, he should get out. There's no room for that kind of guy in the book world.
so now they're blaming The French? Quoi?
Cripes, guys.. your explanations just get more and more far-fetched. Whether there's any truth in them or not is beside the point: you need to come out with full disclosure at the start, otherwise when you -do- tell the truth we'll just keep on ragging on you, like we're doing, because we no longer trust you to tell the truth.. cuz -evidently- you suck.
But yeah [slow clap] good job blaming some schmuck in France for your PR #amazonfail.
@13
People get so offended so easily nowadays. I say good riddance to customers that freak out this easily.
Good riddance to me and my freaky money, eh? I've spent thousands - literally - with Amazon over the last eight years (I checked, my first purchase was in 2001) and it's my own prerogative where I take my freaky dollars. You don't get to tell me where I spend my money, and if spending it with Amazon leaves a bad taste in my mouth from now on, and going somewhere else makes me happy, that's what I'll do.
One thing I did find out through all of this is that B&N has gay romance novels in their "romance" section, not the "gay romance" section. See the difference? They're ALREADY better, as far as I am concerned.
@29 @ people-freaking-out-about-Amazon's-evil-master-plan-to-attack-people-in-alternative-lifestyles: I'm sorry folks, but if you look at the net result of this sort of fiasco, you have a large retailer publicly stating that they screwed up and that they never intended to cause this problem with the books in question. They're basically saying there's nothing wrong with those books and that THEY made a mistake.
At the very outset of this fiasco, a CSR stated that it WAS policy and you only need do the most cursory research to find that. After they realsed the hot water they'd got themselves into, it became a "glitch".
Think about that for a moment. Do you know what Amazon would need to do if they really wanted to screw with gay, kinky, atheist, etc... groups? Stop selling the books. They wouldn't need to engage in complicated shenanigans with rankings and listings etc... They could just delete them from their database and call it a day.
Actually, it's entirely possible they wanted to have their cake and eat it too - both to keep the catalogue items and therefore the sales, and also to try to insulate themselves against complaints from fundies. Hence the rankings shenanigans, as you call them.
#44 Of course we all know how good all CSRs are about not screwing up and telling you something completely wrong (or answering the wrong question). I've never had a CSR give me the wrong information
/sarcasm
A comment further up in the thread does (IMO) a good job of explaining what was going on with that specific CSR. Without being able to go back and really look to see who this CSR was and exactly what information they officially had, I'd be very reluctant to take their word for what was going on.
As far as having their cake and eating it too, that just doesn't sound right. I've bought a few adult items through Amazon in the past and they seem to be only too happy to steer me in the direction of comparable items that might interest me. As I stated above, without knowing what the breakdown was for those 50,000+ items, it seems unfair to get so utterly and stubbornly bent out of shape because some books were listed as adult.
Yes, ok, so now it's "stubbornly bent out of shape" - that's a very old way of invalidating and belittling the person on the other side of the argument. I can't possibly have anything to be upset about, so therefore I'm being stubborn and am looking for things to be offended by. Been there, heard it, too tired to go into that one again and why it's wrong again. While we're pointing to other people's explanations, here, have one - she says everything right:
http://www.humansatwork.com/the-lessons-of-amazonfail/
I'll still "stubbornly" be buying elsewhere for the forseeable future, possibly forever, mainly because I just don't think I'll be able to being myself to press that Buy Now button on Amazon again.