Online book and music retailer Amazon has come under fire when it was revealed that its Gay and Lesbian themed titles had been reclassified as ‘adult’ content and thus deranked from its search results.
Titles like Giovanni’s Room, Brokeback Mountain, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and Rubyfruit Jungle literally just disappeared from search results.
The Huffington Post’s Emma Ruby-Sachs notes:
None of these books have obscene or explicit content. In fact, many of these are the first books I read as a young adult that depicted characters with whom I could identify. Many of them are highly regarded pieces of fiction and some, like Giovanni’s Room have a long history of grappling with censorship.
Though in some ways the Amazon search’s inclusions seemed more ominous than its exclusions. Suddenly the top ranking result for “homosexuality” is a charming book titled, Parents Guide To Preventing Homosexuality. That offering was closely followed by similar themed tomes about the evils of homosexuality and the religious justification for homophobia. Whether Amazon’s intention or not, whether by policy or ‘glitch’, a clear homophobic narrative was revealed. Indeed one which people weren’t going to take to kindly.
A twitter hashtag #amazonfail was quickly established and twitter users expressed their disdain for this corporate behaviour. Discussions of boycotts and petitions emerged and the hashtag quickly became a top trending topic on Twitter.
There is a lot of conjecture about exactly what this means. Whether it was a change of policy for the organisation or a genuine technical glitch, and certainly it is easy to ascertain the position of anyone spouting the #glitchmyass hashtag. At any rate Amazon, Twitter users and the media have been made aware of the reaction and I imagine drastic changes are imminent. Good will takes time to build up but can evaporate within a weekend; Amazon will have to work hard to make inroads with disgruntled customers, many of whom are now former customers.
The whole thing reminds me of another homosexual-related technological mishap. Some of you might remember seeing this gem from MySpace personality Tom:
MySpace's Tom Doesn't Hate Homosexuals, Honest!
oh and some people have asked about the missing orientation option for “gay” on edit profile. that’s a bug that should be fixed later tonight… no, myspace does not hate gay people.. duh.
Though many won’t be as easily convinced that the same is true of Amazon.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Check out the customer-submitted images for that preventing homosexuality book. Hilarious!