It's looking that way. And authors and readers are pissed. Basically, it appears that any book with gay content had their sales records and such removed, preventing them from showing up in certain searches. Then certain prominent author caught on, Amazon released a statement—which no one in the blogosphere is buying—that it was a localized "glitch" related to reclassifying adult content. Except that it seems to be happening at Amazon.everyothercounty domains, and "straight" erotica remains unaffected while gay lit devoid of any such "adult" material is gone.
As a sign of the times, most of the frenzy and rage has been exploding on Twitter of all places. Is that really effective. We'll see. Towleroad has been keeping an eye on the story.
If it turns out there is an anti-gay censoring worm over at Amazon, this could get really, really ugly.
Here is Wired's story. And this was the status this morning via Publisher's Weekly. The comments are revealing too, as PW ha a much more literate, professional, and professional literatti readership.
Update: It's not really clear what's going on. First a hacker claimed credit (for of all things "as revenge for having his Craigslist ads for heroine partners flagged as inappropriate by gay men" WTF.). He also claimed to use both algorithms and third-world labor to mess with the system. Then Amazon claimed it was only an internal error.
I'm guessing more news will follow soon.
Update: i09 has a report.
No comments:
Post a Comment