Super sorry for the long post, but I think this is one of the most fascinating events I've witnessed on the Internet. In case you missed it last week, here's what you missed:Amazon's got a sales ranking system that determines what books are found in searches, which appear in in-house ads, and who gets on best seller lists. This all goes a long way towards increasing a book's sales popularity...
While it made the news on April 12, it looks like the first signs were in February, when Craig Seymour found that his memoir of a gay stripper had no sales ranking. When asked, Amazon replied that this was because his book was classified as an "adult product". News really only began to spread a week ago however when people noticed that LBGT books were deranked, en masse. This included an Ellen Degeneres biography, Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain, E.M. Forster's Maurice, books on gays in politics, self-help LBGT books, a children's book on homosexuality, etc (a community generated list, here).
From the NY Times:
Word of the problem started spreading across blogs and Twitter on Sunday after Mark R. Probst, the author of The Filly, a gay western romance for young adults, posted on his blog that several gay romances, including his, had lost their sales rankings on Amazon. Mr. Probst e-mailed Amazon and got a reply that said the company was excluding “ ‘adult’ material from appearing in some searches and best-seller lists.”
Unfortunately for Amazon the Internet realized that this "adult material" did not appear to include heterosexual content, including such books as Ron Jeremy's Hardest Working Man in Show Business, others filled with Playboy centerfolds, and even a book entitled A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality was still ranked (and is still the top hit if you search for "homosexuality" at Amazon).
So here's where it gets fun: Twitter. Twitter! I had no idea the impact Twitter could have beyond telling everyone what color your poo was in the morning! (nor apparently did Amazon).
The shitstorm that followed started with thousands of Enraged Twitter Users using the #amazonfail thread. This quickly became the top trend in Twitter, beating out Easter and Jesus on the holiday weekend. Here, all the news about the Fail could be found in realtime as everyone repeatedly tweeted about the same pebble of breaking news that they found (probably on Twitter) and wanted to share with others (on twitter). Metafilter, Digg, Reddit, the major news groups, and pretty much any major blog had something to say about it, and proudly the internet united behind our LGBT brothers and sisters!
Meanwhile, Amazon's PR response was this: “We recently discovered a glitch to our Amazon sales rank feature that is in the process of being fixed.”
The Internet, seeing this as being blown off with an inane, half-baked response and more importantly without an apology of any kind, came back with the new Twitter tag, #glitchmyass, as everyone and their dog agreed that Amazon was full of crap. Serious rioting ensued, complete with bombs (A googlebomb), petitions (over 24,000 sigs), open protest letters, calls for public crucifixions, logos, t-shirts, facebook groups, theme music... And of course amazonfail.com was for sale on ebay.
It turns out that while their PR group was high on easter peeps others at Amazon were completely panicking:
By this time, Amazon.com had upgraded the problem to Sev-1... Sev-1 is reserved for the most critical operational issues and often are sent up the management chain to the senior vice president level.
----
...So it's a week later, the books have their ratings back (Twitter kept track of that, too, but I forgot the #tag), and here's what the Internets have come up with:
Official explanation from Amazon: A Glitch
This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.
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.
[Note: still no actual apology...]
From an Amazon worker on the inside: The French!
A guy from Amazon France got confused on how he was editing the site, and mixed up 'adult,' which is the term they use for porn, with stuff like 'erotic' and 'sexuality.' That browse node editor is universal, so by doing that there he affected ALL of Amazon.
From the popular internet: A hacker terrorist has claimed responsibility for the event!
Here's a nice piece I like to call "how to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code"... The combination of these two actions resulted in a mass delisting of queer books being delisted from the rankings at Amazon. I guess my game is up, but 300+ hits on google news for amazon gay and outrage across the blogosphere ain't so bad.
And still others don't care what caused it, but continue to party up the hate towards Amazon until they officially apologize.
So anyway...
It's amazing how fun it is to be a part of a mob mentality, especially when you're so obviously on the right side! I admit that early Monday (last week) morning (after only a few hours of sleep with a migraine, you see) I may have possibly written an e-mail to Amazon... it could be that this letter might have contained a few phrases such as, "less intelligence than a pile of bricks made from bird feces... demand a public apology... may never buy from Amazon again," and, "...require sensitivity training" (+_+). But I didn't send it. Probably. And of course now in hindsight... yeah this is a huge mistake on Amazon's part, but they're a huge company, and with some serious, complicated technical stuff they have to deal with. An apology is definitely still in order I think, but I can't imagine this was anything really malicious on the inside of Amazon if it hit a bunch of genres the same way... I could see how the Reproductive & Sexual Medicine people might not be as vocal, you see.
Anyway. I just thought that was a fun break from the other break I was taking from studying.
4 comments:
"Mob mentality" is exactly right I think.
Twitter can obvioiusly be useful. For example, I heard people were using Twitter to share information during the Oahu's Dec. 26 blackout. So Twitter could be an alternative to KSSK radio in emergencies.
But it also seems to be a place where rumor spreads really fast.
Btw, did you see this video of the new, new thing?
Ugh the hive mind at work. First it seems like good innocent power to the people.
We'll see how fast that power to the people corrupts. Or is it too late. I think it's too late.
I love the hacker post. "Oh yeah, that major upset? I totally caused it. Oh my code doesn't work, you say? they must have fixed the error!"
That's so sixteen year old logic.
There should be a term for that.
the I-did-that-and-you-have-to-take-my-word-for-it clause or something.
If that kind of thing was in any way plausible, don't you think Amazon would have totally leapt on it as an excuse, hacker dudez?
Sigh.
What's interesting about Twitter is that is works on a couple of different levels. I'm sort of stuck at the social level, using it to keep track of witty things friends and colleagues say, with the occasional useful/interesting tip. I have a friend/colleague, however, who uses it professionally, in ways I'm only beginning to understand. She follows and is followed by hundreds of education professionals and industry dudes. She scans for mentions of our company (throughout Twitter), and uses Tweetdeck to group the folks she's following into categories to better filter the ideas that are coming her way. When she needs to know about a specific thing in education, she can scan her lists of like-minded individuals to read people's take on it. When she tweets, she rarely mentions our company (although her affiliation is clear in her profile)--instead, she uses it as a forum to share all manner of educational resources, and is rewarded in kind. Needless to say, she avoids "I just ate a slice of pie!" type messages. It's a wonder to behold, and I'm learning what I can from her.
So what I'm saying here is that a steady stream of unregulated voices is as useless as it sounds, unless you take the time and make the effort to regulate it.
A mob, however, is a mob. This #amazonfail thing, it seems a little to me like a pigpile. I can see how a dumb mistake like this could happen, especially if there are translation issues. The site I work for is one ten-thousandth as complex as Amazon, and I'm always accidentally screwing up stuff for our international sites. I can only imagine how easy it is to fuck shit up at Amazon.
I don't like that everyone's so obsessed with an apology. I mean, they're fixing it; do people really need to hear Amazon say "We're sorry this happened."? Or is everyone fishing for "We're sorry that we hate gays--it's wrong to hate gays, and we know that now. We hope this sets an example for anyone else who hates gays--be careful, gay-haturs... Or the Innernet'll getcha!!"
Which brings this around to a problem older than the Internet--Mobs don't regulate themselves.
Just re-read this post. Awesome piece.
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