Amazon accused of manipulating site content (again): Searches and rankings this time

Update at bottom (20:15 April 12 2009)

It appears that amazon.com has once again attempted an ill-fated manipulation of its site. This is not the first time, of course. Amazon is notorious for caving to pressure from authors and other groups on negative reviews and removing them instead of letting customers make their own decisions. In that same vein, amazon is now removing certain types of books from their front page search results and bestseller lists.

I have tried confirming this with mixed results by searching for titles, but I’m inclined to believe it to be true since amazon.com has a track record with this sort of thing and a number of people on Twitter are reporting problems finding these books. Also, there are a number of authors confirming that their books have disappeared.

Although this issue has been around since February, it has come up again in the last few days because of a post by another author who wondered why two newly released and high profile books in his genre had their sales rankings disappear (if you know any authors, you’ll know that checking their sales ranking on amazon is like you Googling yourself — an obsession in many cases). The next day he noticed that hundreds of books in the same genre and related topics had disappeared. Surely it was a glitch? A programming error? An update to the site gone wrong?

Not being the alarmist type, the author asked amazon for an explanation and this was the response, clearly killing the theory that this is anything other than deliberate:

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude “adult” material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.
Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us.

Best regards,
Ashlyn D
Member Service
Amazon.com Advantage

There is even a screencapture of the conversation on the original blog post (nice touch).

Now you may have noticed that the genre in question is adult (according to amazon). Maybe you don’t read adult material. Maybe you feel that adult material should not appear in search listings. Read on before you shrug your shoulders.

According to reports on Twitter, amazon’s definition of “adult” is amorphous. So far it includes:

• Anything to do with accepting or promoting homosexuality (yet not books that deny or advocate against homosexuality)
• Some erotica, but apparently not Playboy.
• Harlequin’s Spice line.
• Ellora’s Cave books.
• Books about non-heterosexual love whether or not they contain anything sexually explicit.
• Books about gay and lesbian parenting, including books on preventing suicide in homosexual teens.
• Classics such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
• Non-fiction non-explicit accounts of gay/lesbian experience (contemporary and historical).

The above books have reportedly been removed from the front page search results as well as bestseller lists on amazon.com. Now maybe none of these books, which are still for sale if you can manage to find them, are ones that you are particularly interested in or even agree with. I, myself, probably wouldn’t have noticed that these books had been rendered more obscure by amazon’s actions if someone hadn’t told me. It still mattters to me. And I hope it matters to you.

This whole hiding-of-books-based-on-sexual-content thing has the stench of religious fundamentalism. Every argument I have ever come across against homosexuality eventually comes back to religion so I find it inconceivable that religion is not mixed up in this in some way. While I can understand not wanting to read about certain topics based on your beliefs, I cannot understand or condone making it more difficult for others to read that material.

After all, there are other topics that I read about that are equally offensive to some that have nothing to do with sex like *gasp* atheism. I generally won’t touch a book on religion (fiction or non-fiction) with a ten foot pole, but it’s of no consequence to me if someone else wants to read on that topic and I would never take it upon myself to impose my book tastes on someone else by engineering what you find on a bookseller’s site.

There is surely some topic that you are interested that is offensive to someone else (there is always someone who is offended by something). Ask yourself how you would feel if those books were made difficult — or for the novice user, effectively impossible — to find. Now ask yourself what you would do about it.

Links for your reading pleasure (may be updated as I collect more):

The new definition of Amazon Rank

The petition: In protest of Amazon’s new adult policy

FYI: For those wondering why I have included amazon affiliate links, it is because I know amazon tracks these links and I’m hoping if enough affiliates do this that amazon.com will see that it is NOT just amazon “bashers” who are incensed by this so-called “policy.” (I hardly expect anyone to buy following a link from this post )

UPDATE: Interestingly, amazon is trying to claim this as a glitch, which they’ve also tried to claim when negative reviews are removed from their site and also tried to claim when they removed all reviews by any author who mentioned that they were also an author anywhere in their review. This seems to be the default at amazon’s public relations department.

While I don’t buy “glitch”, there is a post that hypothesizes that the amazon site is being “gamed” by a concerted attack to remove certain types of books. It makes for interesting reading and is one of the only explanations I’ve seen that makes sense (but, if true, does not excuse amazon calling it a glitch rather than admitting they’ve been gamed).

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