his wholiness the rev drjon (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} drjon) wrote,@ 2009-04-14 19:33:00 |
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AmazonFail 2: They Did! / They Didn't!
Lots of people are claiming they know what happened... regardless, Amazon have apologized, so this here's the second and last linkdump.
'Gay writing' falls foul of Amazon sales ranking system
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2
Online retailer blames reduced profiles of Winterson, Hollinghurst, Vidal and others on glitch in new family-friendly charts
Amazon calls mistake 'embarrassing and ham-fisted'
http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archiv
"I don't understand how this could be an error when apparently authors have emails stating clearly they were being deranked and why."
#amazonfail: With book monopolies like these, no-one is safe
http://www.crikey.com.au/Media-Arts-a
When Amazon eventually issued a statement, it blamed the kerfuffle on a software glitch. ...A hacker has since claimed responsibility... Elsewhere, Feministing.com posted correspondence from an unidentified Amazon rep admitting that the bookseller was, in fact, trying to protect conservative buyers from 'offensive' titles. Meanwhile, most, though not all, of the delisted books seem to have regained their rankings.
Hacker Claims He Shoved Amazon Into the Closet Using "Inappropriate" Flag Exploit
http://i.gizmodo.com/5210424/hacker-cla
Okay, maybe Amazon is off the hook. The well-known troll Weev is claiming that he's actually responsible for Amazon's sudden surge of LGBT prudishness...
Why It Makes Sense That a Hacker's Behind Amazon's Big Gay Outrage
http://valleywag.gawker.com/5210142/w
Twitter had a big tizzy yesterday over Amazon.com's supposed censorship of gay and lesbian titles, did you hear? Just one problem: A well-known hacker has come forward and claimed the whole thing was his prank.
Amazon Troll Busting
http://bryant.livejournal.com/672165.ht
There's a guy claiming he abused Amazon's reporting system in order to get GLBT books removed from the sales rank listings. Since I have some pretension to technical ability, I figured I'd give his claims a test run. Summation: nope, you didn't do that, you liar you. Nice meta-troll, though.
#amazonfail
http://lisybabe.blogspot.com/2009/04/am
...what hardly anyone is talking about (yet) is that books to do with disability and sexuality have had their rank stripped too... This of course isn't the only recent disability-related Amazon fail...
Amazon coder: "someone internally" tagged thousands of titles "adult"
http://melissagira.com/sexerati/200
...I spoke to an anomyous coder inside Amazon. That coder revealed that someone at Amazon -- a real person -- was responsible for tagging 58,000 titles as "adult" -- not a hacker, and very likely not a "glitch," either...
AmazonFail: An inside look at what happened
http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archiv
I've spoken to an Amazon.com employee who works closely with the systems involved in the glitch... Amazon managers found that an employee who happened to work in France had filled out a field incorrectly and more than 50,000 items got flipped over to be flagged as "adult," the source said.
Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archiv
...according to his inside sources, the story is that a programmer at Amazon France was editing the site to filter porn out of some search results, and he "mixed up 'adult,' which is the term they use for porn, with stuff like 'erotic' and 'sexuality.' The system he was working on is universal, so the change he made propagated across Amazon's sites worldwide...
Amazon's very bad day
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/ar
Some people have wondered if this reveals a culture of homophobia at Amazon, or whether the timing has something to do with the recent legalizations of same-sex marriage in Iowa and Vermont. My own guess would be that it has nothing to do with homophobia and everything to do with the fragility of large organizations.
Why hasn't Amazon fixed things overnight?
http://sbisson.livejournal.com/927640.h
The simple answer is Amazon's architecture. It's highly distributed, and there's no operations team. Each component is run by its development team, of four to five people... The result should be a company that can move quickly in response to outside events. At least that's the theory. I'm afraid the real world doesn't work like that... Oh, and it's a holiday weekend and there's no one there to actually handle the problem as the whole team's gone off on a skiing trip.
Blogs and Twitter Coin "AmazonFail"
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/04/1
Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, says in a statement: "GLAAD has reached out to Amazon.com and they indicate this was an error, so we expect to start seeing evidence of its correction immediately, and any loss of visibility of gay-themed books as a result of this error will be made right by Amazon..."
But go check out my list of Amazon Alternatives, anyway.
Lots of people are claiming they know what happened... regardless, Amazon have apologized, so this here's the second and last linkdump.
'Gay writing' falls foul of Amazon sales ranking system
http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2
Online retailer blames reduced profiles of Winterson, Hollinghurst, Vidal and others on glitch in new family-friendly charts
Amazon calls mistake 'embarrassing and ham-fisted'
http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archiv
"I don't understand how this could be an error when apparently authors have emails stating clearly they were being deranked and why."
#amazonfail: With book monopolies like these, no-one is safe
http://www.crikey.com.au/Media-Arts-a
When Amazon eventually issued a statement, it blamed the kerfuffle on a software glitch. ...A hacker has since claimed responsibility... Elsewhere, Feministing.com posted correspondence from an unidentified Amazon rep admitting that the bookseller was, in fact, trying to protect conservative buyers from 'offensive' titles. Meanwhile, most, though not all, of the delisted books seem to have regained their rankings.
Hacker Claims He Shoved Amazon Into the Closet Using "Inappropriate" Flag Exploit
http://i.gizmodo.com/5210424/hacker-cla
Okay, maybe Amazon is off the hook. The well-known troll Weev is claiming that he's actually responsible for Amazon's sudden surge of LGBT prudishness...
Why It Makes Sense That a Hacker's Behind Amazon's Big Gay Outrage
http://valleywag.gawker.com/5210142/w
Twitter had a big tizzy yesterday over Amazon.com's supposed censorship of gay and lesbian titles, did you hear? Just one problem: A well-known hacker has come forward and claimed the whole thing was his prank.
Amazon Troll Busting
http://bryant.livejournal.com/672165.ht
There's a guy claiming he abused Amazon's reporting system in order to get GLBT books removed from the sales rank listings. Since I have some pretension to technical ability, I figured I'd give his claims a test run. Summation: nope, you didn't do that, you liar you. Nice meta-troll, though.
#amazonfail
http://lisybabe.blogspot.com/2009/04/am
...what hardly anyone is talking about (yet) is that books to do with disability and sexuality have had their rank stripped too... This of course isn't the only recent disability-related Amazon fail...
Amazon coder: "someone internally" tagged thousands of titles "adult"
http://melissagira.com/sexerati/200
...I spoke to an anomyous coder inside Amazon. That coder revealed that someone at Amazon -- a real person -- was responsible for tagging 58,000 titles as "adult" -- not a hacker, and very likely not a "glitch," either...
AmazonFail: An inside look at what happened
http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archiv
I've spoken to an Amazon.com employee who works closely with the systems involved in the glitch... Amazon managers found that an employee who happened to work in France had filled out a field incorrectly and more than 50,000 items got flipped over to be flagged as "adult," the source said.
Re: Amazon and The Gay (French) Glitch, Mike Daisey Responds
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archiv
...according to his inside sources, the story is that a programmer at Amazon France was editing the site to filter porn out of some search results, and he "mixed up 'adult,' which is the term they use for porn, with stuff like 'erotic' and 'sexuality.' The system he was working on is universal, so the change he made propagated across Amazon's sites worldwide...
Amazon's very bad day
http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/ar
Some people have wondered if this reveals a culture of homophobia at Amazon, or whether the timing has something to do with the recent legalizations of same-sex marriage in Iowa and Vermont. My own guess would be that it has nothing to do with homophobia and everything to do with the fragility of large organizations.
Why hasn't Amazon fixed things overnight?
http://sbisson.livejournal.com/927640.h
The simple answer is Amazon's architecture. It's highly distributed, and there's no operations team. Each component is run by its development team, of four to five people... The result should be a company that can move quickly in response to outside events. At least that's the theory. I'm afraid the real world doesn't work like that... Oh, and it's a holiday weekend and there's no one there to actually handle the problem as the whole team's gone off on a skiing trip.
Blogs and Twitter Coin "AmazonFail"
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/04/1
Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, says in a statement: "GLAAD has reached out to Amazon.com and they indicate this was an error, so we expect to start seeing evidence of its correction immediately, and any loss of visibility of gay-themed books as a result of this error will be made right by Amazon..."
Myself, I suspect a confluence. And maybe Bad Stars... ;}P>
But go check out my list of Amazon Alternatives, anyway.
