Am I Blue? , one of the books I mentioned in my earlier post , now has its ranking restored. I suspect that other rankings will continue to reappear as Amazon works on correcting that “glitch.”
I am more and more convinced that this operation was carried out by trolls who exploited Amazon’s woefully insecure ranking system. And my guess is that an uncoordinated customer service response effort prevented them from recognizing how vulnerable they were to this kind of mass manipulation, even though incidents of de-ranking had been reported to them months ago .
Their customer service reps were clearly trying to deal with those those reported problems on a case-by-case basis, each rep looking for a way to fit their correspondence into a pre-approved, “if someone complains about this, give them this response” script. Unfortunately, no one was able recognize that a new problem of epic proportions was brewing. Vulnerability in your ranking system combined with a flawed customer service policy is not the same as a clandestine corporate effort to silence gay and lesbian voices. It is, however, a major FAIL.
Still waiting for more from Amazon. In the meantime, Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, says in a statement : “GLAAD has reached out to Amazon.com and they indicate this was an error, so we expect to start seeing evidence of its correction immediately, and any loss of visibility of gay-themed books as a result of this error will be made right by Amazon … When people learn about the lives of gay and transgender people and the common ground we share, the culture changes and advances. It is so important that stories about the lives of our community are available, and that companies like Amazon promote these titles in an equal fashion.”
Cross-posted at clairemysko.com .
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It seems like you are exactly right in your assumption. My indefatigably tech-savvy friend, Emily, filled me in on this one. I'll share with you the link she shared with me.
http://community.livejournal.com/brutal_honesty/3168992.html