(Untitled)

[alice_montrose]

Quick rec:

The Violet and the Tom by ocotillo-dawn

Warnings: Institutionalized slavery, D/s, Bondage, pain. Specifics constitute spoilers, imo, but not intensely violent, no extreme squicks (no necr./scat./best.). References to minors, but no direct scenes. I like happy endings.

Summary: In what might have been the middle ages, had Alexander the Great and

Comments

[carmentalis]

I'm fairly convinced it really was a glitch. From a company POV, irritating one of the fastest-growing user segments with a potential market size of 15-20% of the population (according to the last marketing studies I saw) is a bad idea. Amazon is too smart to do that deliberately.

[alice_montrose]

While I agree with the glitch theory, I'm also thinking that finding a French scapegoat might give people the impression of it being solved. Which is good, technically - I just don't think it was the French. In any case, it's the best plausible explanation for this, and it exploding in Amazon's face might have been... well, certainly a new experience for them?

[carmentalis]

Well, it's an American company. They have to blame the French. ;-)

Their reaction feels like a typical panic explanation to me. Someone got up on Sunday and went "oh shit", and the PR people had to scramble for an explanation that a) sounded acceptable to most of their users, b) covered their asses and c) didn't give too much away. And on a weekend, the higher-ups aren't available so it might well have been someone lower down the ladder who made that decision, especially if the scope of the issue was underestimated at first.

[alice_montrose]

Yeah, I usually blame the French too. They are really easy to blame. ^_~

I did find the timing for this "glitch" suspicious. Shit hit the fan on Catholic and Protestant Easter, not to mention Passover. Their expressions must have been priceless when they went "holy crap!"... ah, to be a fly on the wall.