#amazonfail answers, finally.
Finally - far too late in my opinion - Amazon has responded to the backlash of #amazonfail.
I haven't seen an official news release yet, but seattlepi.com quoted an Amazon spokesman on the issue. It looks like it was actually a translation error, not a hacker or other nefarious doings, that reclassified tons of books as "adult," thus removing them from searches and sales ranks.
From Lilith Saintcrow:
Well, this is the real story: a guy from Amazon France got confused on how he was editing the site, and mixed up “adult”, which is the term they use for porn, with stuff like “erotic” and “sexuality”. That browse node editor is universal, so by doing that there he affected ALL of Amazon. The CS rep thought the porn question as a standard porn question about how searches work.
...
It’s not the data they share, it’s the editing system-and not all the editing system, but weird, idiosyncractic bits. The Amazon system is mostly hand-built, and often super idiosyncratic, very Millennium Falcon meets Battlestar Galactica. It works, but it can be temperamental, and if you fuck up it takes awhile to correct.
(I'm amused by the new hashtag.)
Ok, so there was a major cockup, both in the cataloguing and in the customer service reps' responses to the authors who questioned this. It still doesn't explain why Amazon has been so slow in getting an official statement out through the normal channels OR through the new channels. The statement at the seattlepi.com blog is the only one I've seen from Amazon. They haven't responded to this on Twitter at all (which is where it went batshit insane), nor have they issued a formal news release for the classic media. The seattlepi.com post came at almost 3pm. Surely Amazon could have had something together before that, aside from the "it's a glitch" remark.
I'm pretty sure they're going to still have to do some fancy talking to calm down the angry Internets that are left, especially considering their incredibly slow public response. Me? I'm going to take their apology at face value and move on. Life is too short to remain angry at a huge, faceless corporation. Someone screwed up, they're fixing it, and they're really sorry.
Since I noticed the pricing differences between Amazon.ca and Amazon.com, in addition to the shipping, I'm switched back to getting my books at local booksellers anyway. Amazon is now just for titles that I can't get anywhere else or that are too hard to find (or for presents). I heard someone say that Amazon wants to become the Wal*Mart of online shopping - cheap, convenient, and they have everything.
I don't shop at Wal*Mart anymore, either.
I haven't seen an official news release yet, but seattlepi.com quoted an Amazon spokesman on the issue. It looks like it was actually a translation error, not a hacker or other nefarious doings, that reclassified tons of books as "adult," thus removing them from searches and sales ranks.
From Lilith Saintcrow:
Well, this is the real story: a guy from Amazon France got confused on how he was editing the site, and mixed up “adult”, which is the term they use for porn, with stuff like “erotic” and “sexuality”. That browse node editor is universal, so by doing that there he affected ALL of Amazon. The CS rep thought the porn question as a standard porn question about how searches work.
...
It’s not the data they share, it’s the editing system-and not all the editing system, but weird, idiosyncractic bits. The Amazon system is mostly hand-built, and often super idiosyncratic, very Millennium Falcon meets Battlestar Galactica. It works, but it can be temperamental, and if you fuck up it takes awhile to correct.
(I'm amused by the new hashtag.)
Ok, so there was a major cockup, both in the cataloguing and in the customer service reps' responses to the authors who questioned this. It still doesn't explain why Amazon has been so slow in getting an official statement out through the normal channels OR through the new channels. The statement at the seattlepi.com blog is the only one I've seen from Amazon. They haven't responded to this on Twitter at all (which is where it went batshit insane), nor have they issued a formal news release for the classic media. The seattlepi.com post came at almost 3pm. Surely Amazon could have had something together before that, aside from the "it's a glitch" remark.
I'm pretty sure they're going to still have to do some fancy talking to calm down the angry Internets that are left, especially considering their incredibly slow public response. Me? I'm going to take their apology at face value and move on. Life is too short to remain angry at a huge, faceless corporation. Someone screwed up, they're fixing it, and they're really sorry.
Since I noticed the pricing differences between Amazon.ca and Amazon.com, in addition to the shipping, I'm switched back to getting my books at local booksellers anyway. Amazon is now just for titles that I can't get anywhere else or that are too hard to find (or for presents). I heard someone say that Amazon wants to become the Wal*Mart of online shopping - cheap, convenient, and they have everything.
I don't shop at Wal*Mart anymore, either.