AmazonFail Part Deux: Glitch or Policy?
So, an Amazon spokesperson has said this is all "a glitch". #glitchmyass was a very popular tag on Twitter tonight. What about the emails saying the deranking was "policy" that two authors have shared (one from February, one from a day or two ago)?
It suddenly occurred to me: the two actually aren't mutually exclusive.
Let's say they HAVE got a relatively new policy to derank "adult" books. (Leaving aside that IMO, if you sell them, sell them!) Amazon's catalogue is HUGE. Ridiculously huge, and from a couple things I've read, rather organically grown over time. You'd want to develop some code to handle things, and the logic might be pretty tricky. Possibly, something really did go wrong with it. Assume that Amazon really didn't intend said code to catch so much in its net: from their point of view, the problem would be 'a glitch' that resulted in non-adult books being deranked, not the policy of deranking adult books itself.
It's not an excuse for what happened (or for the policy!) but it might be a potential reason. I'm willing to give Amazon the benefit of the doubt on the Queer front, for now... but they damn well better fix it toot sweet, and they're going to have to do a LOT better than "a glitch" when they explain themselves in the morning. If there really was a "glitch" as most people would understand the term, they have two issues to address: the code problem that caused the ridiculously wide and apparently biased net, AND the adult-deranking policy itself. I hope they realise that; I think addressing only the (putative) code issue would look disingenuous.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm still pissed about this. I just believe that "never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence" (or stupidity) is a pretty good rule to live by, and I think that it's still possible this was stupidity (the policy) + incompetence (bad code; failure to test it fully before sending it live). I've never had any reason before this to think Amazon was GLBT-unfriendly, and in fact had reason to think otherwise. Doesn't change the facts of the offense, though.
Still... I would expect a 'glitch' of that sort to hit during the week; why would you roll out new code for a time there's likely to be few people working to oversee and fix any issues? That'd be another hit in the 'stupid' column, in the given scenario...
tl;dr: The "glitch" response may have been tone-deaf, but it also COULD be true, even given the "policy" emails: deranking the GLBT stuff could be a glitch in code for enforcing the 'adult' policy. (Which is, separately, also stupid.) I'll wait and see, but not for long.
It suddenly occurred to me: the two actually aren't mutually exclusive.
Let's say they HAVE got a relatively new policy to derank "adult" books. (Leaving aside that IMO, if you sell them, sell them!) Amazon's catalogue is HUGE. Ridiculously huge, and from a couple things I've read, rather organically grown over time. You'd want to develop some code to handle things, and the logic might be pretty tricky. Possibly, something really did go wrong with it. Assume that Amazon really didn't intend said code to catch so much in its net: from their point of view, the problem would be 'a glitch' that resulted in non-adult books being deranked, not the policy of deranking adult books itself.
It's not an excuse for what happened (or for the policy!) but it might be a potential reason. I'm willing to give Amazon the benefit of the doubt on the Queer front, for now... but they damn well better fix it toot sweet, and they're going to have to do a LOT better than "a glitch" when they explain themselves in the morning. If there really was a "glitch" as most people would understand the term, they have two issues to address: the code problem that caused the ridiculously wide and apparently biased net, AND the adult-deranking policy itself. I hope they realise that; I think addressing only the (putative) code issue would look disingenuous.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm still pissed about this. I just believe that "never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence" (or stupidity) is a pretty good rule to live by, and I think that it's still possible this was stupidity (the policy) + incompetence (bad code; failure to test it fully before sending it live). I've never had any reason before this to think Amazon was GLBT-unfriendly, and in fact had reason to think otherwise. Doesn't change the facts of the offense, though.
Still... I would expect a 'glitch' of that sort to hit during the week; why would you roll out new code for a time there's likely to be few people working to oversee and fix any issues? That'd be another hit in the 'stupid' column, in the given scenario...
tl;dr: The "glitch" response may have been tone-deaf, but it also COULD be true, even given the "policy" emails: deranking the GLBT stuff could be a glitch in code for enforcing the 'adult' policy. (Which is, separately, also stupid.) I'll wait and see, but not for long.