Amazon backtracks on gay censorship
Nearly 60,000 gay and lesbian novels and non-fiction were stripped from Amazon.com’s online charts and search pages over the weekend as the number one online retailer implemented new content restrictions that sparked boycott calls.
The company backed down on Monday following a backlash dubbed AmazonFail that spread quickly via online social networking sites. It appeared all products filed with the keyword gay or sexuality, such as the children’s book Heather Has Two Mommies, were being treated as adult material and hidden from searches.
Those affected included works by EM Forster, Jeanette Winterson and Stephen Fry, as well as the prize-winning The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst and Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proux.
Anti-gay books, such as A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality by Joseph Nicolosi, were largely spared, as were Playboy centrefold collections filed as photography.
Amazon’s customer service representatives responded to some affected authors on Saturday stating the changes were a new policy to exclude adult material in consideration of our entire customer base. A contrary statement was issued a day later calling the reclassifications a glitch and a ham-fisted cataloging error and was not intentionally targeting gay books. It has since reversed most of the gay-related censorship.
Joel Derfner, author of Swish: My Quest To Become The Gayest Person Ever, wrote on his website that he was outraged and frightened by the move that disproportionately affected LGBT books, but was also concerned genuinely adult material was still being censored by policy.
Although Amazon.com is a private entity and entitled by law to sell the books it wishes to sell in the manner in which it wishes to sell them, it is also the first bookstore of choice for the plurality, if not the majority, of book buyers in the world, and for many of them it is also the last bookstore of choice, Derfner wrote in an open letter to Amazon.
More than 17,000 people have already signed an online petition against the changes at thepetitionsite.com/1/in-protest-at-amazons-new-adult-policy
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Apparently the ‘Nazis’ have been held responsible for the ‘Holocaust’ of World War 11.
Apparently 6 million Jews, Communists, Gypsies and Homosexuals were taken away by the ‘Nazis’ and murdered.
Christian Europe had nothing to do with it. They just stood there and watched.
Actually that is a lie.
Christian Europe did not just stand there and watch. Christian Europe was happy to watch the Nazis take away all the Jews, Communists, Gypsies and Homosexuals to be murdered.
The banning and burning of books was a precursor to the genocide which occurred during World War 11.
The news that a major book distributor tried to impose a private ban on texts which portrayed homosexual behaviour as socially acceptable behaviour would please and encourage homophobic people.
The news that homosexuals were beaten to death would also please and encourage homophobic people.
The action by Amazon is not an insignificant matter.
It is a precursor to genocide.
Some of the contents are a bit too much.
I believe a hacker has now claimed responsibility for the glitch. The motive seems to have been homophobic but it doesn’t look like there was any specific political aim involved.
I now buy all my books online from The Book Depository in the UK. Books are usually 50% of the Aussie price and cheaper than Amazon, and where it beats Amazon hands down – all books are despatched by FREE express airmail.
I use a cataloguing application for both books and movies that searches amazon for details. Over the past *year* I’ve noticed I can no longer find details from amazon for movies of a homosexual or lesbian interest, without going through a google search process to find a direct link. It ain’t just the books they be censoring.
After talking to some friends in online sales I’ve come to believe that it’s *possible* this was indeed a cataloguing error. I think Amazon.com has handled the situation badly–neither the word “sorry” nor the word “apologize” has appeared in any communication I’ve gotten from them–but they may not be as perfidious as I thought (though of course they may be just as perfidious as I thought). I’m still trying to figure out what I think about the whole thing.
Why would a company incorporated to make a profit undertake a course of action that could only result in a loss of profits?
The explanation given by company representatives;
Amazon’s customer service representatives responded to some affected authors on Saturday stating the changes were a new policy to exclude adult material -œin consideration of our entire customer base. A contrary statement was issued a day later calling the reclassifications a glitch and a -œham-fisted cataloging error and was not intentionally targeting gay books. It has since reversed most of the gay-related censorship.
The fact that two contradictory statements were made indicates that the company changed its policy as a result of criticism received.
Why would the company introduce the policy in the first place?
Most governments have anti-discrimination policies so it is unlikely that the company was influenced by a government of governments.
All anti-homosexual organisations already discourage their members from reading material that they proscribe and texts portraying homosexuality as socially acceptable behaviour would be proscribed by those organisations.
So if those anti-homosexual organisations threatened Amazon that they would request their members to boycott the company if the company did not introduce a policy to remove texts from their online charts, which texts portrayed homosexuality as socially acceptable behaviour, then that threat may have influenced Amazon to remove those texts from their online charts.
Another explanation for the company’s behaviour is that the directors of the company based their decision to remove certain texts from the company’s online charts because those texts were in conflict with the personal ideological beliefs of those directors. It could be that those directors put their personal ideological beliefs before the best interests of the company’s shareholders. When the reaction to the policy from the authors and the public became noticeable the directors decided the reverse the policy because the consequences of not reversing the policy might have been that the directors would be called to account for their actions by the company’s shareholders.
Typical!!!!
I glad I bought my last book at Barnes & Noble. Perhaps some letters to Amazon saying Borders, Barnes & Noble or whoever will now be my first choice. It’s not as if Amazon’s the only bookseller around.