On #Amazonfail
So, yes, full confession - I joined Twitter mostly because of #amazonfail. I'm probably not the only one. That said, some thoughts on the matter running to slightly more than 140 characters...
I'm not a big GLBT reader. Despite being female, I don't read a lot of feminist texts. I don't typically read any of the genres being targeted in this - my faves are pretty much fantasy, scifi, historical fiction, and occasionally classic literature. But it wouldn't matter if they were targetting birdwatching books.
The thing that makes me furious is that it's censorship. Restricting access to what others can read is the wrong here, and while in this case certain communities are being targeted, the people who should be offended, who should be rising up in force, are the readers, the writers, the thinkers, anyone who believes in the free expression of thought.
Fortunately, it seems that is indeed the case, if #amazonfail on twitter is any indication. Sure, the mainstream news media has yet to take notice, but it's been a while since I've thought the mainstream news media had much relevance to anyone who was interested in thinking.
Some have pointed out that maybe it's not amazon itself behind the book derankings - that maybe some fundie group, or some group of hackers in it for the lulz, decided to go in and spam the "adult content" button to get the books' rankings removed. As far as I'm concerned, that doesn't improve my opinion of amazon one bit. Putting machinery in place for users to decide to censor books? How is that better than amazon deciding to censor the books themselves? I don't want "the masses" or "public opinion" to decide what I'm able to read anymore than I want a corporation making that decision.
And yes, I fully believe that what's happening is censorship. They're not putting a little "Warning! Adult content!" flag, or even a big one, next to the book's search results; they're just making the search results not there any more. Removing the books' places in bestseller lists is a lesser crime, but still, it's pretending the books don't exist. It's the digital world equivalent of pulling the books off the shelves and putting them in a back room, where you have to know the secret password (exact search string in this case) to get to them. Censorship.
I was planning to buy a Kindle with my tax return money, since I'm running out of book space, but no more. I'll wait until some company that doesn't censor books comes out with a reader.
I'm not a big GLBT reader. Despite being female, I don't read a lot of feminist texts. I don't typically read any of the genres being targeted in this - my faves are pretty much fantasy, scifi, historical fiction, and occasionally classic literature. But it wouldn't matter if they were targetting birdwatching books.
The thing that makes me furious is that it's censorship. Restricting access to what others can read is the wrong here, and while in this case certain communities are being targeted, the people who should be offended, who should be rising up in force, are the readers, the writers, the thinkers, anyone who believes in the free expression of thought.
Fortunately, it seems that is indeed the case, if #amazonfail on twitter is any indication. Sure, the mainstream news media has yet to take notice, but it's been a while since I've thought the mainstream news media had much relevance to anyone who was interested in thinking.
Some have pointed out that maybe it's not amazon itself behind the book derankings - that maybe some fundie group, or some group of hackers in it for the lulz, decided to go in and spam the "adult content" button to get the books' rankings removed. As far as I'm concerned, that doesn't improve my opinion of amazon one bit. Putting machinery in place for users to decide to censor books? How is that better than amazon deciding to censor the books themselves? I don't want "the masses" or "public opinion" to decide what I'm able to read anymore than I want a corporation making that decision.
And yes, I fully believe that what's happening is censorship. They're not putting a little "Warning! Adult content!" flag, or even a big one, next to the book's search results; they're just making the search results not there any more. Removing the books' places in bestseller lists is a lesser crime, but still, it's pretending the books don't exist. It's the digital world equivalent of pulling the books off the shelves and putting them in a back room, where you have to know the secret password (exact search string in this case) to get to them. Censorship.
I was planning to buy a Kindle with my tax return money, since I'm running out of book space, but no more. I'll wait until some company that doesn't censor books comes out with a reader.