Non-impostion of order also equals escalation of chaos

[nancylebov]

An update, if you want a list of which books have had their sales ranking removed and which haven't.

Link thanks to filkertom.

Having read that the sales rank removals started in February, and the customer service department defended it as policy, that Amazon has grown so fast that its software is cobbled together so messily that there's no way either an internal or external conspiracy could be responsible for this, and that it's not conceivable that Amazon's top management would do something so culturally implausible and self-destructive, I was about ready to blame Martians.

However, here's a plausible suggestion that it was actually Eris and Murphy:

The simple answer is Amazon's architecture. It's highly distributed, and there's no operations team. Each component (and over 200 go into a single page) is run by its development team, of four to five people. They are responsible for its features, its development - and for making sure it runs effectively. The result should be a company that can move quickly in response to outside events.

At least that's the theory.

I'm afraid the real world doesn't work like that. I've been a developer and I've managed developers and I can tell you that what really happens is something like this:

Someone comes up with a neat idea that they evangelise among the other developers, and it gets added to the platform. The developers become wedded to their idea, and they keep adding features. Something from the outside occurs that affects the data managed by the service, and they don't notice. After all, it's their design and it's perfect. The problem gets worse, and a few external symptoms are noted and passed on to the developers. They're too busy to pay much attention to them, and so they ignore them. Then suddenly, BANG, and everything breaks.

Oh, and it's a holiday weekend and there's no one there to actually handle the problem as the whole team's gone off on a skiing trip.

Now I can't guarantee that's what has happened with the deletion of GLBT content from the Amazon ratings system, but I suspect it's more likely than not.

Link thanks to redbird at cakmpls.

I think this theory implies that customer service was lying when they said the deletions were the result of a policy. It would seem that Amazon is almost incapable of having policies.

Still, this couldn't have happened without substantial background prejudice against LBGT people.

NonObligatorySF[1]: There's a rant in one of van Vogt's Isher books by an empress who explains that it only looks like she has absolute power. In fact, any order she gives gets interpreted until there's nothing left of it.

[1]From the good old days of rec.arts.sf.written, when people would add a little sf to non-sf posts.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

Someone comes up with a neat idea that they evangelise among the other developers, and it gets added to the platform. The developers become wedded to their idea, and they keep adding features.

This is what I call "stone soup design."

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

No, the cust-sat rep wasn't lying.

It's just that what they were saying wasn't what they thought they were saying.

Policy: that which is deemed "adult" is de-sales-ranked.

Other thing: that which is GLBTBBQ is "adult".

The problem is that GLBTBBQ stuff is "adult", not that "adult" things are de-listed. Cus-sat rep said that the policy was de-listing "adult" things. Not that the policy was that GLBT things were "adult".

So: in February, a gentleman was told that his memoir of working as a gay stripper was deemed "adult". He points out, rightly, that Diabalo Cody's menior of working as a straight stripper wasn't -- but that MAY be an isolated incident, unrelated to the larger issue.

This is my guess:

The "policy" is de-listing adult things.

The event in February was an isolated incident which SHOULD have been a tip-off to this vulnerability.

The "glitch" is a mass categorization of GLBT things as "adult".

As far as I'm concerned, the significant question is "what is the glitch"? The options are: 1) an actual Amazon decision/policy (which I doubt), 2) someone within the company making an unsanctioned decision (possible) 3) an outside hacker group, either for political reasons or for the lulz (I have no way to even judge if this is possible or probable) 4) a result of adding in some sort of third-party database or something which had this unintended result (that'd be my guess, but I'm not certain.)

Sounds likely

[unix-vicky.livejournal.com]

I agree with your separation of the two factors involved. And it does seem likely that one of your theories is correct about the causes behind the second factor. I assume (I haven't seen otherwise) that there's no way for the average customer to flag something as adult.

[nancylebov.livejournal.com]

"Lying" might have been an excessively strong way of putting it. "Bullshitting" might have been more exact. I'm imagining a situation where the overarching policy was to tell anyone who complained something vaguely plausible without caring much about whether it was accurate.

[thnidu.livejournal.com]

davidkevin posted a link to this analysis that proposes two hypotheses. Short extract:

Now, let's just put ourselves in Amazon's shoes. Keep in mind that Amazon is a smug, fairly liberal company headquartered in fucking Seattle of all places and, last I checked, Jeff Bezos is not exactly a Christian fundamentalist. Why on earth would they suddenly censor only a specific group of content that deals with a marginalized and politically active community? Why would this policy change not take the form of a specific policy, but rather of very discriminately flagging only certain titles as "adult" content? Why would this happen over a weekend?

It's obvious Amazon has some sort of automatic mechanism that marks a book as "adult" after too many people have complained about it. It's also obvious that there aren't too many people using this feature, as indicated by the easy availability (and search ranking) of pornography and sex toys and other seemingly "objectionable" materials, otherwise almost all of those items would have been flagged by this point. So somebody is going around and very deliberately flagging only LGBT(QQI)/feminist/survivor content on Amazon until it is unranked and becomes much more difficult to find. To the outside world, this looks like deliberate censorship on the part of Amazon, since Amazon operates the web application in question. To me, this looks like one of two things:

1. Some "Family"-type organization astroturfing Amazon in an attempt to rid the world of EVIL PRO-HOMOSEXUAL FILTH!!
2. Bantown

[madfilkentist]

Here's an article that says an LJ user claims "credit" (strange use of the word) for the occurrence. I checked his LJ, and he looks like a raving idiot, and the article offers no support for the claim.

[avram]

Here's a debunking of that hacker's claim.