Sunday, April 12, 2009

#glitchmyass

Update: Amazon's Director of Corporate Communications, Patty Smith (who has probably had one hell of an Easter Sunday) is quoted in Associated press that "there was a glitch in our system". Given that the original blogpost (below) includes a statement from Amazon employee a month ago about "adult" content ruling, this is not going to satisfy anyone. We need a better explanation than that. The Twitterverse is all ready judging that response with the hashtag: #glitchmyass

Amazon hides gay books from their recommendations

There is a rather worrying story going round that Amazon is removing the work of gay authors from their recommendations.
In a blog post by Mark R Probst it seems that Amazon is admitting that they removed a lot of gay literature from their sales ranking. It seems to be a concerted effort to remove many gay best sellers from their lists rather than a disgruntled author, disappointed that his book has been classified as adult.

Amazon is taking the stance that anything with a "gay" or "lesbian" themes is 'adult' and stripping them of their sales rankings which results in not be promoted by them in their best sellers list. This includes many gay classics and even gay romantic novels. Despite this heterosexual literature such as: Playboy centerfolds, Jackie Collins and Harold Robbins remain actively promoted and keep their rankings.

If you read the comments on Mark's blog there are many followers of this story who have investigated fully and it seems to be an active anti-gay bias....to action!

Twitter #hashtags: #amazonfail