Amazon: 'Glitch' caused gay censorship error

Amazon: 'Glitch' caused gay censorship error

edition.cnn.com

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Online retailer Amazon has found itself at the center of a storm after it removed a number of gay and lesbian-themed books from its sales charts.

American novelist Gore Vidal has long been known as a liberal intellectual.

On Sunday, a number of distinguished writers, including Gore Vidal, Annie Proulx and E.M. Forster, suddenly lost their best-seller ranking -- which is the number that Amazon uses to show how well one title sells compared with another.

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[edit on 4/15/2009 by semperfortis]

This was one of those "PR nightmare within hours" situations (like we saw with Norton a couple of weeks ago). And like with the Norton incident things went downhill as enraged Bloggers attacked Amazon for the "move". And as with the Norton incident, when Amazon finally reacted on the accusations, their reaction was "hackers"...

However there is some indications that the reason was as follows:

...conspiracy theories started to circulate - that Amazon really was intent on quietly making its service more "family friendly", that Christian fundamentalists were behind the whole thing...
Source

And from another blogger:

What does a classic gay novel like James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room have to do with gay porn?

...
EDITOR's UPDATE: Here is the response Christie Keith just received from Amazon.com

Thanks for your message. There was a glitch with our sales rank feature that is currently being fixed.

Drew

A "glitch", huh? Um, how does this jive with Amazon's form letter above? It seems pretty damn clear that Amazon classified gay material as "adult" and are now trying to backtrack without admitting what they did. I do think the classification might have been inadvertent, but to call it a "glitch with our sales rank" without admitting responsibility is only compounding their mistake. Great to handle this P.R. disaster, Amazon!
Source

As I understand it, the big deal is not so much the "glitch", but the fact that Amazon classifies all homosexual literature (i.e. books that may have a central homosexual theme) as "adult" even though there is nothing specifically "adult" in the books...

edition.cnn.com
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[edit on 4/14/09 by Gaspode]

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[edit on 4/15/2009 by semperfortis]

Discrimnination plain and simple. I have a lot of Gay Friends, I for one will be making sure I wont be buying books from Amazon anymore. I am sure my friends will feel the same way.

Ridiculous.