Oh, please.

[textualdeviance]

With all due respect to the folks on my flist who freaked out about this:

The idea that the Amazon thing this weekend was some sort of deliberate company policy thing is preposterous.

First, Amazon is and always has been a queer-friendly company, and by its very nature, not exactly the kind of place to bow to right-wing pressure about anything. This is not Wal-Mart, folks. Nor is it SixApart.

Second, anyone who has worked on the back end of any sort of major online presence, whether that's retailing, news or just about anything else, knows very well how massive databases work, and how one person pushing the wrong button can completely screw up an entire chunk of data.

Which is, as I guessed when this first came out, likely exactly what happened.

Is there a real company policy to filter porn from ranking and thus generic searches? Sure. My guess is that that filter's been in place for a long time. Had there been an intention in the first place to filter out the material in question, it would've happened back then, and not suddenly happened well after the filter was established.

Granted that I'm biased, but sometimes, my fellow progressives really irritate the crap out of me when they're so quick to assume ill intent when any large company appears to do something stupid. All corporations are not the same. Just because Amazon or Costco or dozens of other companies have a large market share doesn't mean they're automatically members of the Axis of Evil (and really, one wonders how Apple always somehow manages to escape this assumption. Justin Long, maybe?)

Size does limit companies' ability to be agile when something does go wrong, but it's ridiculous to assume that EVERY large company is necessarily headed by some sort of demonic issuance from the hellmouth, or that every boneheaded action taken by any employee necessarily reflects on everyone else, from the board on down to the poor schlub who cleans the cafeteria. (And conversely? It's not exactly sane to assume that a given smaller corp or even the corner mom-and-pop is necessarily good, either. You might be surprised to know how many small companies exploit workers and discriminate.)

I'm 100% in favor of boycotts, conscience shopping, letter-writing campaigns and every other consumer-oriented way of exerting pressure on companies for many different kinds of misdeeds. But if you're going to do that, at least have the common sense to research the company's entire history first, and not go on rumor and stupid online memes to make your buying decisions for you.

Comments

[thefirstalicat.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about here. What happened?

[ironymaiden]

i think of it this way: i'm not interested in a company with such lousy QA and DB administration having my financial information.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

That much I can get behind. It is kind of scary that a single person can re-categorize a whole slew of products with one stupid move.

[noipeh.livejournal.com]

I wrote it off when it first appeared, looks like I wasn't wrong.

[amai-unmei.livejournal.com]

Amazon failed PR 101: they did not immediately address the situation when it first came to light. Not only that, but their first responses to authors' queries were what fanned the flames; by stonewalling or using vague responses, Amazon pretty much opened the door for speculation.

It wasn't until a couple of days later, after countless blog posts and mounting outrage over what could have easily been diffused had Amazon addressed concerns directly.

This is a warning to other companies: PR is not something to be ignored. Yes, Amazon has gay-friendly policies, but that is not enough. When the authors were originally querying about the issue, the issue should have been addressed at that point. It was that communication gaffe that lead to all of this. And hopefully, other companies learn to communicate with their customers instead of letting people who don't know the system control the conversation.

[falcongirl.livejournal.com]

This. And their response was wholly inadequate. It is just not possible for me to believe that a company with as huge a web presence as Amazon doesn't have policy in place saying "If shit goes tits up, placate the masses and hit the big red button to summon Someone With Authority".

When authors were writing in, concerned, BACK IN FEBRUARY, that was the clue there was a problem and Amazon should have begun their placate and investigate then. Not after the shit hit the proverbial fan and caused internet uproar.

Their handling of this situation was the deciding factor in why I pulled my account. It is still pulled. It will not be resumed. If they are going to handle PR nightmares this inadequately, they are not going to do it with my money.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

Except that I'm not sure they DID know what was going on.

The adult filter was already in place. When the one author complained, the CSR (likely underpaid) simply chose the best representative canned response, and that was that. Sure, she probably should've investigated further, but having spent many years doing that sort of thing in the past, I know that it's not always possible to follow up on everything. And even if she, personally, did fail to do anything, how does that reflect on company management as a whole?

Chances are very good that they didn't know a damned thing about this until it blew up this weekend. And expecting a company that large to turn on a dime and respond any faster than they did--on a holiday weekend, no less--is really expecting too much.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

So the failure of one CSR is supposed to reflect on the entire company?

I just don't see why. If management didn't know because that CSR didn't tell them, what were they supposed to do?

[penguin-attie.livejournal.com]

Loath as I am to quote pnh after the whole RaceFail debacle, he does have a point:

None of which means that anyone shouldn’t be mad at Amazon, or that Amazon shouldn’t be embarrassed. Rather, it means that this is how the world works. A great deal of racism, homophobia, etc., happens not because anyone particularly wants to be racist or homophobic, but because the ground has been tilted that way by arrangements made long ago and if you’re not constantly on the lookout it’s easiest to roll downhill.

The issue here is still that someone thought it was a good idea to remove certain books from searches. Which is not how customers would assume they work. Therefore, I feel cheated.

However, it is ironic that an employee at Amazon France is being blamed for thinking "gay" was obviously an adult category. France. Where the outside of every newsstand is plastered with boobs and the occasional man-on-man action. In plain view of the children!

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

However, it is ironic that an employee at Amazon France is being blamed for thinking "gay" was obviously an adult category.

Except that that's not what happened.

What happened was that the category for "adult" (porn) got conflated with categories for "erotica" and "sexuality." Hence why the stuff on sex for people with disabilities got thrown into the mix.

What was likely the culprit? A language barrier. Not homophobia.

[waterfaery.livejournal.com]

Thanks for saying this. :)

And I'm guessing PR was doing the best they could during the investigation; it's not like they *knew* what was wrong and were just holding the info back. I'm betting they did start the investigation and thought they were placating the masses and summoning Someone With Authority. But that's just my POV.

But then I don't tend to assume malice when stupidity will explain things, and I have a pretty big tolerance for collective stupidity as I work for a big company full of smart people and know that sometimes a large pile of smart people = collectively dumb decisions/actions.

It amazes me how people anthropomorphize corporations as willful individuals of a single mind--perhaps driven by the fact that our court systems and gov't policies treat them as such. I see people personalizing companies all the time in the brand research I do.

[textualdeviance.livejournal.com]

I think what annoys me more than anything is the expectation that the company as a whole--and everyone who works there--is responsible for anything individual employees do.

Like... Don't blame Xerox for a single guy going on a shooting spree there, y'know?