DISQUS

Mona N. · 8 months ago

What a PR NIGHTMARE for Amazon. I knew there was some sort of explanation, since Amazon would be committing corporate suicide if they intentionally removed GLBT items. Frankly, I'm more amazed at how FAST this spread -- especially since it's Easter Sunday, and extremely curious to see how this may or may not impact Amazon, as well as the digital marketing space.

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins · 8 months ago

I hope the object lesson is learned here from corporate America - you must understand (not game) social media to do business on a national and global scale. If you are a top 100 brand like Amazon, you need to have much smarter people as corporate spokesmen than the ones that were engaged in combating this weekend.

Jesse · 8 months ago

The real problem here is the revelation that Amazon is de-ranking items at all. Whether this was a true "glitch" in an algorithm or not, Amazon should not be doing any de-ranking of adult materials.

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins · 8 months ago

Why shouldn't they de-rank things? First of all, it's a privately held company, and I'll be darned if someone tells me I can't remove certain things from my site completely that I don't want, let alone de-rank them.

Secondly, and more important from a money-making standpoint, if I want to be known as a mainstream company, shouldn't I be able to remove objectionable content from easily accessible areas?

Chris Baskind · 8 months ago

Point taken, but it does still seem a tad hypocritical. Amazon is happy to take the money -- but you have to go round to the back entrance to make your purchase. Bah. If there are titles so offensive that it would damage the Amazon brand to have them listed with everything else, maybe they shouldn't be selling them at all. Instead, Amazon ends up with this "privately held" PR mess. ;-)

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins · 8 months ago

True. I think there are probably competing interests there at Amazon in that respect. On the one hand, they realize that they need to pare down their offerings to maximize their mainstream appeal... they're quickly becoming the goto for most purchases online. Brick and mortar retailers are dropping like flies.

They also have an ethos of open-ness. You can buy and sell *anything* on Amazon. They're pretty much built on that. Given their size and their ethos, though, it's got to be a tough balancing act. I don't envy them.

Rick · 8 months ago

I understand the technology perfectly well, since it's been my profession for a just a few decades. Technology is made by human beings, and is never, ever neutral. Technology is as biased as the people that made it. The fact that words like 'gay' or 'lesbian' score so high on this algorithm that there seems to be no need for any other trigger to flag it as offensive shows clear bias.

Never mind the fact that the entire scheme is clearly biased. Removing sales rank from erotic books, that's a political decision that has fuck all to do with business. Amazon has done fine for over decade selling all kinds of adult stuff.

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins · 8 months ago

Really?

So you don't imagine that there are some folks, somewhere in the world, that might be offended by overt sexuality and eroticism? Nowhere can you think of a large group of Americans that might avoid a site that prominently displayed content from those genres? Racking your brain, you can't see how offending large cross-sections of society might hurt business?

Look - I like being turned on by eroticism as much as the next guy... I'm not deluding myself into believing that there are some things you do and don't do if you want your business to appeal to the mainstream.

To that end, what does politics have to do with it? Are we electing corporations to public office, now?

Let's get our terminology and understanding of tech and business straight and continue this conversation. You claim to be a techie, but fail in your most basic understanding of the meaning of the term. Tech, itself (as a tool), is neutral. Does your hammer have a motive?

Jesurgislac · 8 months ago

Wow, are you stupid.

Now, you're inclined to pay attention to me more, or less, after that opening? Just wondering why you chose to undercut a supposedly-rational argument by insulting your intended audience.

Let's move on.

The algorithm doesn’t read the book and see if it gets sexually excited. The algorithm scans for certain keywords and tags. If they match, a Boolean value is set. If they don’t, it’s set the other way. That Boolean value determines whether it’s listed on the top list or not.

Yes. You know the one thing worse that an abusive idiot? An abusive idiot who thinks everyone else is stupider/more ignorant than him. Not that I'm saying that applies to you, of course.

I and plenty of others already figured out that this is what happened: an algorithm was set up that included "lesbian" or "gay" as indicators of whether a book was "adult". And while Amazon had already been made aware that their algorithm would de-list books that weren't "adult", they still made use of it. Further, they did not instruct their customer service reps that quite a few books would be falsely delisted as "adult". They didn't care enough about the situation that was going to blow up to fix it in advance. (Consider: had Mark Probst got an e-mail saying "We are instituting a new system: I will check to see if your book has been included under the "adult" listings by mistake: if an error has been made, we will fix it" - he would never have got so mad, and the Twitter blowup would never have happened.) And yeah: their "not caring" is indicative that they just didn't think lesbian and gay books, or lesbian and gay customers, were that important. We live in a heterosexist, patriarchal society: no "conspiracy theory" is needed to assume that straight men running a big company are accustomed to thinking of lesbian and gay issues as something pretty trivial.

Even still, it’s out is no guarantee that the story will be heard.

Of course not. You begin by calling the audience you want to reach idiots.

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins · 8 months ago

I generally assume people who either don't know how to do research or refuse to do research before expressing an opinion are less smart than me. This, of course, may not be true. A lot of people who don't do the research for whatever reason may not be dumber than me, they may simply be lazy.

I'll leave that wide open in your case and let the world decide - see, one simple query to Google News would show that assuming Amazon has a bias pro or anti-gay *is indeed* conspiracy theory. Who was the last "news organization" to make such an allegation?

WorldNetDaily.

I rest my case.

(here's a direct link to the search query - http://riz.gd/sw7kk4)

---

Now, do you want to get serious? Or would you rather keep trading barbs? I can do this all day - if you actually read my post, you'd realize it was written in a jocular tone.

AMc · 8 months ago

Although an interesting, well written and much needed explanation of the mechanics behind the screw up, I'm dismayed by the caustic, insulting tone you've taken here. Unnecessary. But I guess it scratched an itch.

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins · 8 months ago

Sometimes, headline histrionics are required to get attention for your piece. Is there anything else in the post aside from the two times I used the word "idiot" that are caustic?

My lack of respect really comes from a place that despises intentional obtuseness and intellectual dishonesty. Society has trained us, like I said, to not apply critical thinking skills in situations dealing with race and sexuality as much as Pavlov's dog was trained to salivate at the sound of a bell.

Seriously - I know as much as anyone. There have been times, just for positing or explaining certain issues regarding race that I've been called racist by my readers and drive-by commenters. For a time, particularly when the job market was really sucking ass a few months in a row while I was at Mashable, I wouldn't tackle any controversial race pieces because of the irrational effect it had on my audience, and how desperately I needed my job (I couldn't afford to lose it).

AMc · 8 months ago

I'm just a fly by guest, Mark, and I don't know you. You ask what else in the post is caustic, so here goes:
Why invoke Kanye West? Not knowing you, I can't presume to guess your intentions when you go out of your way to bring up West; apparently, you see a connection that I'm missing, and I am really trying to not be intentionally obtuse here. It is the implied connection that I find myself annoyed by. Are you implying that Kanye West was crying victim, as are the LGBT Amazon customers?

Again, a worthwhile and informative piece. I'm glad you had your coffee with the interested individual.

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins · 8 months ago

The Kanye West invocation served a double purpose - first, I thought of it as a throwaway joke, and kept it because I think the way that Kanye was received after his proclamation is how I perceive the cries from the LGBT customers, which is to say that he may or may not have had a point in what he said, but he most certainly didn't think it through before he said it.

I wouldn't have at all even known about the story if a gay (tech-head) friend of mine hadn't brought up the topic me and said "this #AmazonFail business is a load of crap."

I imagine that if you were put off somewhat by the gist of the post that the Kanye comment might come off as caustic, but most people have said its the funniest line of the post.

For the record, I understand that you weren't being antagonistic and "intentionally obtuse" .. your tone is a lot different from those that were