a possible explanation of the Amazon thing

[swan_tower]

I don't know if this theory is correct, but I frankly consider it a more likely explanation than "Amazon's executives got lobotomized and decided to institute a PR disaster over Easter weekend" --

http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html

Short form is, some organization (no idea who) may have mobilized to flag certain content on Amazon until an automated feature kicks in to remove it from the rankings. It would explain the bizarre selection of items hit, and also why the initial response of Amazon flacks was to say they're de-ranking "adult" content -- if this theory's right, that's exactly what they're doing, but they hadn't yet realized somebody was gaming the system.

And Easter weekend is a sadly unsurprising time to see positive LGBT* content hit in such fashion.

So. We'll see what develops. But this makes a lot more sense to me than this being some kind of actual corporate decision on Amazon's part.


*Or whatever form of abbrevation you prefer. Man, I hadn't realized just how many permutations of initials that cluster of ideas had until I started seeing posts about this incident all over my flist. What the heck is the (QQI) add-on?

Comments

[thespisgeoff.livejournal.com]

If the material had been flagged "adult" by a consumer-driven process, then it does explain the email. First-layer customer service is almost always a "look at the file, send the appropriate response" operation, instead of an investigative one. The agent responding to the complaint wouldn't have done anything but check the code, or the logs, or what-have-you, and report what they said.