Dely. ([info]tehdely) wrote,
2009-04-12 16:39:00
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On Amazon Failure, Meta-Trolls, and Bantown

Yet another UPDATE: Amazon claims embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error

Some UPDATES:
  • [info]weev has come forward and claimed responsibility for #amazonfail, in a manner similar to what I describe below. I can not attest as to whether or not his claim is factual. [info]bryant rebuts.
  • Amazon now claims this is a glitch. Only second-hand information seems to be available; there is no official posting from Amazon at this time
  • It is worthwhile to note that during strikethrough, not everybody at Six Apart was naive to the reality of what was going on. I feel like I implied otherwise below. What I can say is that Six Apart learned a lot from that episode about managing PR and relations with your user community; lessons that I'm sure Amazon is learning very fast right now.
Onwards with the post:

Disclaimer: Please note that this is just a theory, and take it as such.

*ahem*

Relevant links first:
Basically, #amazonfail is the name for a brewing Internet shitstorm that started some time on Easter Sunday regarding Amazon.com's sudden decision to blacklist any books with LGBT(QQI) content from appearing in best-seller lists or search results. The blacklist also apparently extends to books with feminist themes, books about dealing with rape, etc. Initial complaints to Amazon resulted in the following stock response, which just angered people more:
In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.
"GAY CONTENT IS ADULT??!! RAPE SURVIVOR CONTENT IS ADULT?!!?? HOW DARE YOU AMAZON RARARGH INTERNET RAGE!" responded the masses, freely pointing out the continuing availability of straight porn and sex toys in Amazon search results (or dog-fighting books or trashy romance novels or Mein Kampf or anything else that would be found "objectionable" by any reasonable standards). Clearly a double standard was at play.

Now, let's just put ourselves in Amazon's shoes. Keep in mind that Amazon is a smug, fairly liberal company headquartered in fucking Seattle of all places and, last I checked, Jeff Bezos is not exactly a Christian fundamentalist. Why on earth would they suddenly censor only a specific group of content that deals with a marginalized and politically active community? Why would this policy change not take the form of a specific policy, but rather of very discriminately flagging only certain titles as "adult" content? Why would this happen over a weekend?

It's obvious Amazon has some sort of automatic mechanism that marks a book as "adult" after too many people have complained about it. It's also obvious that there aren't too many people using this feature, as indicated by the easy availability (and search ranking) of pornography and sex toys and other seemingly "objectionable" materials, otherwise almost all of those items would have been flagged by this point. So somebody is going around and very deliberately flagging only LGBT(QQI)/feminist/survivor content on Amazon until it is unranked and becomes much more difficult to find. To the outside world, this looks like deliberate censorship on the part of Amazon, since Amazon operates the web application in question. To me, this looks like one of two things:
  1. Some "Family"-type organization astroturfing Amazon in an attempt to rid the world of EVIL PRO-HOMOSEXUAL FILTH!!
  2. Bantown
A theory starts to emerge. Now let me backtrack for a bit, and talk about a similar event that happened to my own company, Six Apart, back in 2007, called Strikethrough. Here's how Strikethrough worked:
  • Somebody enlists Warriors for Innocence, a "To Catch a Predator"-like organization (but significantly more fundie and batshit) in the battle against "pedophile" content on LiveJournal
  • Warriors for Innocence brings down holy Jihad on Six Apart, consisting not only of complaining directly to 6a, but also threatening to involve the media, as well as directly threatening companies like Google, which advertised on LiveJournal, to pull their ads, lest they be viewed as supporters of pedophilia
  • Six Apart, faced with a sudden and unexpected and multipronged attack, reacts rashly, and in an unannounced and unexplained policy change bans thousands of accounts from LiveJournal for listing certain sensitive keywords in their profiles, without the chance for appeal, and hopes that WFI will leave them alone
  • The ban ends up targeting mostly fiction writers, and is so sweeping that it includes communities for discussing famous works of literature, rape and incest survivor communities, and more. The collateral damage is massive
  • Butthurt users rise up en masse and create a shitstorm the likes of which Six Apart hadn't seen since the "Boob Nazi" debacle
  • With its tail between its legs, Six Apart backpedals. Not too long afterward, LiveJournal is sold to SUP, who quickly roll back many of the more objectionable policy changes
That, my friends, is pure Bantown. What is Bantown? Some things Bantown is not:
  • A trolling organization
  • A group of people (at least since 2007)
  • An IRC channel
Bantown is a tactic for inciting meta-lulz on multiple levels through the alignment of third-parties against each other. Bantown is like the plot of most James Bond movies, wherein some nefarious evildoer brings the US and the Soviets close to war. Bantown is a trolling technique of the highest order, which usually pits communities against each other, or communities against companies, or organizations against companies, or companies against organizations... Lest I sound too starry-eyed, let me list a few successful Bantown trolls:Of these, the Firefox shitstorm, Nipplegate, and Strikethrough stand out. Friends, #amazonfail is simply more of the same. I don't mean to imply that any of the same people are involved, but rather that the same tactic is involved, and it is working devilishly. Cleverly as well, this troll was perpetrated on a weekend AND a holiday, when Amazon's customer service would be operating on a skeleton crew and most of those who would be able to fix the problem would be at home and possibly unavailable or on vacation. Also, like Nipplegate and Strikethrough, this troll pits a marginalized and activist community against a big company, with the Internet and all its various discussion media (in this case, blogs and Twitter) as the facilitator.

Amazon will spend weeks cleaning up this PR mess. Trust will be destroyed for many, and may not ever be repaired for some. People have already mentioned canceling orders and canceling accounts, and by this time the controversy has found its way to MSM blogs and newspapers. Expect the fallout to last a while, and when you scratch your head at why Amazon would allow such a thing to happen, remember "I told you so".

This whole event also brings to mind an ongoing debate I've had about the merits of trolling, which I define in its simplest form as "exploiting and demonstrating the weaknesses of online trust relationships". In this case, it is Amazon's trust relationship with its users, upon whom they rely to flag objectionable content. Whether or not exposing vulnerabilities in trust systems is, in itself, a net positive is a whole other debate, similar to the debate over "full disclosure" in the Internet security world. I'd like to bow out of this debate entirely, though you're encouraged to discuss it in the comments if you'd like :)

The author is a former non-member of a non-IRC channel called Bantown which no longer exists, never existed, and will never exist again. He also worked at Six Apart during Strikethrough and complained loudly to his superiors, to no avail, that they were being trolled. The author now enjoys the simpler things in life, keeps his trolling to the comment sections of local blogs and newspapers, and is by and large a better and happier person as a result. The author has no relation to any of the Epic Trolls enumerated above except for perhaps not knowing some of the non-entities involved in not perpetrating them.
Tags: amazonfail, bantown, lulz, theory, trolling

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Anonymous

April 13 2009, 00:55:42 UTC 3 years ago

Regardless

A company that large should have a more responsible IT department, then...or at least a responsive PR department...please...they deserve what they get, tech glitch or not....

Anonymous

April 13 2009, 01:21:52 UTC 3 years ago

Re: Regardless

Please. It's not only a weekend but a holiday weekend for two major religions. If it's truly a bantown-type thing going on here, this weekend was chosen for just such a reason.

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[info]eldestmuse

April 13 2009, 01:24:21 UTC 3 years ago

Even if they aren't deliberately targeting the LGBT audience, the fact remains that the philosophy behind putting the feature to remove the sales ranks of bestselling authors, thus hurting their livelihood based on morality instead of popularity, based on being "adult" is fundamentally objectionable.

[info]tehdely

April 13 2009, 01:28:03 UTC 3 years ago

Yeah, I would really prefer if they at least let people choose whether or not "adult" items should show up or not. Not all of us are prudes. Google gives you the option to disable "Moderate Safesearch"... why not Amazon?

The fact that the filtering is both imposed and non-optional and, apparently, quite gameable is a disaster for Amazon.

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[info]missyjack

April 13 2009, 01:24:27 UTC 3 years ago

Interesting theory. Although i would be surprised if Amazon left major decisions like removing of sales rankings to an automated program. Unless its all a plot be Stepahnie Meyers to have Twilight #1 best seller in all categories.

I would think if this was the case then authors who had complained would've been told it was due to 'complaints' and not a new policy.

Anonymous

April 13 2009, 01:26:59 UTC 3 years ago

Oh, I'm sure that any removal gets flagged for human review eventually.

But I wouldn't be surprised if automatic delisting happened after a certain threshhold of flags as a CYA for when someone isn't around to do it manually (i.e. easter weekend)

[info]tehdely

3 years ago

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[info]scavgraphics

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[info]faunaana

April 13 2009, 01:30:19 UTC 3 years ago Edited:  April 13 2009, 01:30:32 UTC

This has been going on since February.

[info]tehdely

April 13 2009, 01:33:00 UTC 3 years ago

Hmm, interesting. Maybe someone doing a trial run on a smaller set of books? For whatever reason, it absolutely blew up today.

[info]eldestmuse

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Anonymous

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[info]eldestmuse

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[info]porcelain72

April 13 2009, 01:34:07 UTC 3 years ago

This makes sense. Given some of the positively retarded "reviews" I've seen of books there (such as complaining about the gay content in Angels in America), I wouldn't be surprised if certain members took it upon themselves to act as "protectors" of American morals.

Anonymous

April 13 2009, 17:01:43 UTC 3 years ago

Let's see what happens next. In the meantime, is it necessary to insult those with disabilties by casually throwing around the word "retarded" and comparing them to those who cannot see past their own narrow mindedness? Remember, equality for all, including those with IQ's below 70!

Anonymous

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[info]zumayabooks

April 13 2009, 01:38:55 UTC 3 years ago

It's an evil Amazon plot

As someone who has dealt with Amazon in one way or another for almost a decade, I can tell you that when it comes to communication they seriously suck. In fact, they basically HAVE no communication.

For those who ran screaming to customer service to be give a canned response doesn't surprise me at all, because that's SOP. Even when there's absolutely no good reason for them NOT to provide a logical explanation, Amazon will hide behind legalese or PR obfuscation, thus compounding whatever felony people are sure they've committed.

And the media, who love nothing better than a howling mob equipped with virtual torches and pitchforks to liven up their Monday morning editions, because Sunday is a notoriously slow news day and a holiday Sunday is deadsville, will do everything they can to make sure nothing resembling facts or logic make it through the editorial process.

I agree with our author--this has all the stink of trolling. Next thing you know, Homeland Security will be stepping in to determine if it's al Quaeda.

Anonymous

April 13 2009, 06:08:41 UTC 3 years ago

Re: It's an evil Amazon plot

Or, it could be that big online music company, pissed off that Amazon is underselling tunes for download. Competition is hell!

[info]pixxelpuss

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[info]bookshop

April 13 2009, 01:41:11 UTC 3 years ago


this is incorrect: this has been happening, complete with responses from customer service reps explaining "amazon's new policy", since February.

so yeah. to me it sounds like MAJOR corporate mismanagement. the customer rep i talked to this morning said no one working their department today had ever heard of the policy change or had any idea that it was happening.

[info]tiferet

April 13 2009, 06:04:42 UTC 3 years ago

Actually, there were leaks and incidents before each of the above listed other things, like Nipplegate and Strikethrough, so it's not entirely necessarily true that just because there were a few incidents a few months earlier that there wasn't a Bantown action.

[info]luper

April 13 2009, 01:45:23 UTC 3 years ago

this makes a lot of sense.

Anonymous

April 15 2009, 01:22:28 UTC 3 years ago

YOU ALL GOT IT WRONG........someone is ALWAYS WRONG on the internets


FAGS comprise a tiny portion of the population anyway....amazon doesn't need their business & their books, most of all

a great idea would be to put a VERY SPECIAL clickable LINK dedicated to the
LGBT faction [on the AMAZON front page]....once they click...it's all rainbows & unicorn books all the way [no more flagging!]

free towels & furries....also pics of african-americans on welfare with BIG DICKS

& jewish matzah balls in LGBT 'secret places'

[info]luper

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Anonymous

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[info]thewickedbitch.blogspot.com

April 13 2009, 01:48:49 UTC 3 years ago

Love It

I love your theory. I had my own little theory myself that I posted on my blog. I bet it is some Focus on the Family crap or something like that. I'll cut and paste my thoughts:

Sunday, April 12, 2009
I Intuitively Felt it Coming...
I had a strange presentiment about this current amazon fail fiasco that is breaking out. During the elections, I was searching on Amazon.com for bdsm and fetish books and I noticed something really strange about some of the tags on the books. I noticed that on some of the sex, bdsm, erotica, etc books that they were tagged "books obama loves". I had this really strange flash in My head that this right-wing jackasses were up to no good, manufacturing a smear campaign that Obama is a crazy sex freak so that all these books would pop up when searching for Obama.

Ya now, if you take a look at My Amazon wishlist, you will notice that I am a major propaganda fanatic. At the time, it occurred to Me that these right-wing assholes are masters at "manufacturing knowledge" with this type of propaganda tactic, in the sense of Chomsky type manufacture.

This is not just an attack on the lgtb community-this is an attack by right wingers against anything that does not support their value system. Even some of the feminism books and politics of disability and sexuality have been de-ranked. Many people have been stating that Amazon customer service has been stating that books are de-listed based on the tags that people do when they are reviewing them. Demand that they have fair and accurate tags placed on products.

[info]mouseworks

April 13 2009, 03:38:29 UTC 3 years ago

Re: Love It

Actually, one of my books has been included and hasn't been tagged at all. For a while, Centuries Ago and Very Fastwasn't included in my books (others out from Tor and Harper Collins) even though its sales figures would have placed it as my best selling book.

details here at Amazon

Anonymous

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[info]redex

April 13 2009, 01:48:54 UTC 3 years ago

Interesting perspective, and entirely possible. Traffic seems to have downed the Publishers Weekly article which seems to have gotten in contact with someone at Amazon so I don't know anything new that may have come of that, but it is hard to believe that this was a legit top-down decision. The whole situation with Craig Seymore lends itself to your theory as well. Let's just hope Amazon comes out with a sensible response tomorrow.

[info]eldestmuse

April 13 2009, 01:50:23 UTC 3 years ago

I'm interested to see how the situation with Craig helps, rather than hurts, this theory.

[info]redex

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[info]arielmeadow

April 13 2009, 01:58:03 UTC 3 years ago

Makes 100% sense. Thanks for the rational explanation.

[info]bronxelf_ag001

April 13 2009, 02:01:56 UTC 3 years ago

I agree, this makes a lot of sense and I linked to it in my LJ. But I want to point out that this is exploitable because we have decided there's such a thing as "adult" content, when in reality it's the other way around. There's no such thing as adult content- there is merely such a thing as "children's" content. And until we get that through our collective skulls, this will continue to be a viable exploit.

[info]dsmoen

April 13 2009, 02:11:46 UTC 3 years ago

This is a very good point!

[info]keeni84

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[info]emeraldsedai

April 13 2009, 02:06:33 UTC 3 years ago Edited:  April 13 2009, 02:08:19 UTC

Hey, thanks for the explanation of Strikethrough, which I never did understand, but which I suspected had something to do with cleaning up the house prior to selling it.

Your Bantown explanation is much more fulfilling from a socio-fascinating perspective. *takes of corporation-deflecting tinfoil hat*

However, the Easter weekend theory kind of gets blown by reports that amazon deranking of GLBT material has been going on since at least February.

ETA Preview=friend.

[info]ambeaux

April 13 2009, 06:11:07 UTC 3 years ago

Not if the deranking is caused by x number of adult tags being checked during y time frame for a specific book.

If, back in February, the right number of 'adult' flags were checked for the book in question (male stripping, it's possible) caused the book to get automatically deranked until a person could review it and decide then I still think this theory is plausible.

[info]antonia_tiger

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[info]anatsuno

April 13 2009, 02:08:21 UTC 3 years ago Edited:  April 13 2009, 02:10:34 UTC

let's say your theory is right. The mere fact that instead of Amazon using listing processes in the logical way: 'use sales rank to form best sellers listings' + 'strips items tagged X, Y & Z from these lists', they apparently use badly thought out processes which go 'let's use tags and flags to strip sales ranking from the stuff we might want to remove (some times) from (some) views to spare ourselves a PR shitstorm about adult content, and THEN we'll be able to process best sellers listings that are completely non-accurate but don't offend anyone, yaye!'

It's not that they've (only) lost my trust in them as a commercial entity able to respect my worth as a person by doing something homophobic. It's also that they've proved themselves to be bad librarians (and I need to trust the person shelving the books knows what it's doing before I can like/go back to a given bookshop), and bad at computing/handling/sorting the information they possess (which is the same thing, with the added problems that it's not just disordered shelves, it sounds like also disordered book- and record-keeping).

That's really pathetic, trolling or no.

[info]eldestmuse

April 13 2009, 02:24:52 UTC 3 years ago

Precisely!

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Anonymous

April 13 2009, 02:09:58 UTC 3 years ago

tweeted! thanks for your post. it's an interesting take on the situation.

[info]mresundance

April 13 2009, 02:11:38 UTC 3 years ago

And how are we to know this is not a trolling post right here?

There's too much supporting evidence to necessarily debunk the amazon.com fiasco by now. Most of that supporting evidence comes from COMPLETELY different and not necessarily linked sources.

Sorry. It's a nice theory which I don't buy.

[info]ms_daisy_cutter

April 13 2009, 15:45:03 UTC 3 years ago

FTW.

I have no idea if [info]tehdely is trolling or not. However, between the smug and condescending tone toward people who are justifiably upset over this fiasco, and the implicit plea for sympathy and understanding for poor, downtrodden giant corporations (going by his revelation that he used to work for 6A), I wouldn't have been particularly convinced by this post even if I hadn't already read that Amazon customer disservice verified their policy in emails to both Craig Seymour and Mark Probst.

[info]7kim_moon

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[info]achinhibitor

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[info]clodia_risa

April 13 2009, 02:13:36 UTC 3 years ago

That....makes more sense than any other theory I've heard today. Shit.

[info]rashaka

April 13 2009, 18:14:55 UTC 3 years ago

I don't buy it.

1) Not all of these de-ranked books have been victims of an influx in negative audience reporting, if any.

2) Timing began two months ago and trickled since then.

3) Between stupidity and "troll conspiracy".... I fall back on stupidity every time.

[info]clodia_risa

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[info]medievalist

April 13 2009, 02:13:43 UTC 3 years ago

Except it doesn't work that way. A living person at Amazon gets a list of books to check for questionable content.

That person gets to make a yes/no decision about whether or not to forward it to someone with live edit privs, and makes a written report with a reason and suggestion of what and how to edit, up to and including delist.

So no. Not automatic.

[info]keeni84

April 13 2009, 02:15:06 UTC 3 years ago

So you're basically saying that when Amazon says "It's a glitch in the system" they're lying?

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[info]pickwick

April 13 2009, 02:14:29 UTC 3 years ago

It's vaguely plausible, except that amazon doesn't have a "complain about this book" button, as far as I can see. There's a "contact us" link at the bottom of book listing pages, but I don't think it even registers as a comment specifically about that book. So it's hard to see how an automatic filter like the one you're talking about could be triggered.

[info]arrow00

April 13 2009, 05:26:30 UTC 3 years ago

hit "tt" really fast from any book page on amazon and the tagging feature will pop up. you can create any tag you want, or use an existing (e.g., "adult" tag.) the assumption here is an organized group could go in and do a search on "gay" and then go through tagging en masse.

[info]pickwick

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[info]mresundance

April 13 2009, 02:15:55 UTC 3 years ago

Plus, flagging D H Lawrence on Amazon to the point they pull rankings for Lady Chatterly? Really? How long has D H been in Amazon? Since they started? And how many complaints must have been registered - and totally ignored in that time?

Only idiots and book burners flag books like that. Not the majority of the reading public and not those who actual have an understanding of literature at at least a basic level.

[info]miera_c

April 13 2009, 02:42:22 UTC 3 years ago

Only idiots and book burners flag books like that. Not the majority of the reading public and not those who actual have an understanding of literature at at least a basic level.

You seriously don't think that the extreme religious right in this country is capable of that kind of sustained action? One pastor at one megachurch could send a single email blast with a set of instructions and get thousands of people to start clicking on Amazon or any other site and produce results. I dunno if that's what happened here, but saying it's impossible is ludicrous. The wingnuts have just suffered enormous defeats on the marriage front in D.C., Vermont and fucking Iowa of all places. I can easily see some evangelical group picking Easter weekend to fight back by trying to get the "pro-gay, anti-marriage" content off Amazon's rankings.

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[info]beadattitude

April 13 2009, 02:25:00 UTC 3 years ago

Thanks for the perspective!

[info]penmage

April 13 2009, 02:26:42 UTC 3 years ago

This makes so much sense to me. I have been puzzling over AmazonFail all day--obviously because it is wrong, but mostly because it just doesn't make any sense to me. This feels right, to my gut.

[info]txvoodoo

April 13 2009, 02:31:19 UTC 3 years ago

Exactly - Amazon's never been gay-shy before, or sex-shy!

What I've bought from there testifies to that.

Not only that, but this could substantially decrease their revenue, and I don't mean from boycott - ineffective searches mean lost sales.

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[info]adafrog

3 years ago

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[info]redcoast

April 13 2009, 02:28:59 UTC 3 years ago

I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

[info]bonobo23

April 13 2009, 02:33:01 UTC 3 years ago

Word.

[info]asakiyume

3 years ago

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[info]redcoast

3 years ago

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[info]asakiyume

3 years ago

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[info]moiety_tx

3 years ago

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[info]elmyraemilie

April 13 2009, 02:44:28 UTC 3 years ago

Any time I see the word "obvious" used it makes me think that research needs to be done. Do you *know* that Amazon has a means for users to flag entries? I have used Amazon and have never seen such a thing.

[info]eleanor_lavish

April 13 2009, 12:45:59 UTC 3 years ago

Hey love! (This is getting exciting!) Every book has a tag feature, about halfway down the page. I never bother with them, so I usually gloss right by. But if they DO have a policy that books tagged by readers with keywords they see as "adult" are to be suspended from sales rankings (even if just until they can be reviewed by someone on staff to makes sure they really are "adult"), then this trolling explanation would make sense.

My issue with this is that this policy exists at ALL, and they enacted this policy without telling users about it, and without giving them the option of opting out of that forced Big Brother action. Maybe I WANT to see the sales rankings of just the books tagged "ADULT GAY SEX"! I mean, WHO WOULDN'T!?

[info]rollfizzlebeef

3 years ago

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[info]eleanor_lavish

3 years ago

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[info]rollfizzlebeef

3 years ago

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[info]rollfizzlebeef

3 years ago

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[info]eleanor_lavish

3 years ago

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[info]inioranackatori

April 13 2009, 02:46:20 UTC 3 years ago

Warning About Warriors for Innocence Homepage

Whatever you do, for the love of internets, DO NOT GO TO THEIR HOMEPAGE!!

It has been confirmed by multiple people (and I'm pretty sure this was back during the Strikethrough, but darned if I know who and when) that the Warriors for Innocence have put in a nasty piece of coding on their website. This coding WILL preforming link searches that WILL track your address to everything you've got: LiveJournals, Google searches, things as inane as FanFiction.net accounts, possibly even e-mail accounts, too.

I realize that getting an opinion from both sides of the argument is the best way to avoid bias, but please -- these guys are known nuts. Avoid getting eaten by them, please.

[info]redcoast

April 13 2009, 02:52:54 UTC 3 years ago

Re: Warning About Warriors for Innocence Homepage

In my vagina?!

[info]inioranackatori

3 years ago

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[info]redcoast

3 years ago

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[info]inioranackatori

3 years ago

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[info]redcoast

3 years ago

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[info]inioranackatori

3 years ago

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[info]redcoast

3 years ago

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[info]quizzicalsphinx

3 years ago

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[info]ellid

3 years ago

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[info]tiferet

3 years ago

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[info]sqlrob

3 years ago

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