http://consumerist.com/5209209/gay-and-lesbian-books-lose-amazon-sales-rank-for-some-reason
They say that they’re filtering out “adult content” in their ranking, but many of the books they flagged have no adult content in them whatsoever- they only have instances of gay or lesbian characters/themes/subjects within them. I’m not sure why Amazon is doing this, but I’m asking that people do not buy from Amazon until this “error” is corrected.
This doesn’t strike me as a big deal 
It’s only one site and all it’s doing is reclassifying books and removing sales rank info and only to books with homosexual content. And I don’t buy from them ever, anyway. It’s not like they’re refusing to sell them or burning them or something. This doesn’t effect enough people in a big enough way for me to care, sorry homos.
Haha.
Wow.
Fuck you Amazon, censorship is the the true gayness going on here.
(Psst, come back to the chat, I’m totally up for some talkin’, just had a nosebleed when you came in from excitement and passed out before I could respond. Yeah.)
PS: Hades, it’s about the attitude.
I know, but I just can’t imagine very many people giving a shit about these books. I don’t think what they’re doing is good or anything, but I’m not sure even one single person is going to be negatively affected by this. I mean, 99% of people are straight, and I’m guessing 99% of homosexuals don’t even buy books about homosexuality, and I’m also guessing that not many who do would even care about sales rankings or classifications, and even then there are so many other places to buy books than Amazon.
Come on, the total volume of evil being done here is very small.
They’re not just banning books about homosexuality. 
Go read the article.
Fuuuuckkk why does skimming shit always come back to bite me in the ass >:(
Awardwinning bestsellers such as Augustun Burrow’s (I probably horribly misspelled his name) “Running With Scissors” are being delisted, among many other books that just MENTION homosexuality. As Cavelcade said- RTFA!
If you believe the old gay studies, 10% of the populace is gay. Those studies were from the 60s or 70s and were suspect in their definitions. However, it’s the only stats I know of which attempt to estimate how many people are gay.
I reread the article and I still say this isn’t that bad. Even if the books aren’t all homosexually themed, it’s still just classifications and rankings, and it’s still only Amazon, and it’s still primarily books most people will never want, and award-winning bestsellers don’t need help getting off the shelves anyway.
Bitching about this seems petty.
…Thanks 984.
Why do you thank him o_O 10% (tendency rising) is an awful lot.
<a href=“http://rosalarian.livejournal.com/253096.html”> This</a> pretty much sums up my thoughts about this. This is bullshit from beginning to end. -.-
Hey, Amazon, nice clusterfuck! First, it discriminates against gay books. Second, it discriminates against some “erotic” books, but not others (they don’t sell Lady Chatterley’s Lover but Lewis’ The Monk, wherein he rapes & kills a girl, is available). Third, it considers sex adult, violence not. Fourth, it doesn’t offer a way to use the whole website as-was for adults. Fifth and perhaps most important for a bookstore, it limits its selection of books.
I generally dig Amazon for its selection and prices, but that is bullshit.
Anyway, Hades, most people won’t want books at all*. That doesn’t mean bookstores should close because businesses generally stay in business by servicing people who are interested in what they sell e.g. books, not the ones who aren’t. The assumption that books with homosexuality are read only by gay people is wrong: check out this list.
On the bright (sparkling side), Twilight has still three entries on Amazon’s top 100. I mean, fuck me.
*Okay, in most countries 50-60% read at least a book a year, but a very large % read just one book. You generally don’t find more than 20% of 10+ book readers.
I avoid purchasing from Amazon for a variety of other reasons already. 1 more to the list!
Is the ownership of Amazon extremely right wing or something? I have a hard time understanding why a company that sells books for profit would discourage people from buying those books. Did they do some sort of cost-benefit analysis to determine the amount of money they were losing from right-wingers who object to Amazon listing these books outweighed the amount of money they would lose from delisting them? I guess we’ll hear more about this in the coming few days.
Mmmph. Yeah, Zepp, it really doesn’t make sense, although I have been hearing the theory that this wasn’t an internal decision of Amazon, but someone abusing the flagging system: a trolling attempt or maybe a right-wing organization, or all of the above. Either way, this is turning into a right mess; one thinks it’s better to wait and see what’s going on. But I’m really doubting this was Amazon’s intention.
Amazon itself hasn’t really been right-wing, as far as I can recall. But this isn’t just about books with or about homosexuality; LBGTQ in general, feminist books, books on adolescent sexuality, and the like have been hit with it too.
Amazon employees gave something like $120000 to the Dems and $10000 to the GOP (too bored to find the page again, sorry).
Anyway, Amazon seems to be backtracking, claiming it’s a glitch that’ll be fixed. Note that I read somewhere these changes began 2 months ago.
The funny thing is when you realize little actual pornography or actual adult “content” was censored.
This makes me angry! *Fume. Just for that I’ll keep on not using Amazon!
Care to share those reasons so we can all hate them some more?
I’ve ordered products from them several times as gifts and they weren’t ever packaged as gifts, with the receipt in the box and everything. I’ve also had to run after products that didn’t get shipped.
They messed up my order of DQ8 back in the day. It’s been jihad ever since.
Oh - and I checked back in on time, and somehow they linked my login information to an account belonging to one of my brothers. Not encouraging.
Slightly off topic, I was looking at my new baby mice this morning (they are PAINFULLY cute) and I see something happening in another one of my female cages on the side. I turn my head and I see one of the females aggressively humping another one. It was interesting to say the least.