Amazon Fail, Monday morning edition
Apr. 13th, 2009 10:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
threeplusfireAmazon says "It's a glitch!" But doesn't apologize or clarify or make any attempt to assure customers this won't happen again.
Why calling it a glitch is failboat.
GalleyCate senior Editor Ron Hogan was the Gay & Lesbian studies editor at Amazon from 1998 to 2000. He posts some serious questions about the situation.
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rm:
# Annoyance that people got up in arms about this because obviously it wasn't going to turn out to be as nefarious as it seemed.
Public outrage is the Stick of Efficiency. Accidental bias is still bias and still creates a problem. This matter getting public attention in a manner that was largely civilized was useful. If it hadn't gone down this way, authors affects would still be trying to sort this out with Amazon a month from now, as demonstrated by several cases of books that were affected by this nonsense as early as February.
Being passive or silent even in the face of "accidental" bias is just as lame as condoning it.
The Guardian reports on it
Oh how I love it when a company says "it's policy" only to waffle later and declare no such policy exists!
I'm removing my Amazon wishlist, and I would like to state for the record that I will not buy anything from Amazon until the situation is rectified. For me, that means a public apology for allowing this to go on for months, for pretending like computers just up and do crazy things to embarrass you and for behaving as some customers/writers/artists are less worthy than others.
(I'm so deeply annoyed that we purchased our new Roomba through Amazon this past month. Ugh.)
Why calling it a glitch is failboat.
GalleyCate senior Editor Ron Hogan was the Gay & Lesbian studies editor at Amazon from 1998 to 2000. He posts some serious questions about the situation.
Quoted from
rm:# Annoyance that people got up in arms about this because obviously it wasn't going to turn out to be as nefarious as it seemed.
Public outrage is the Stick of Efficiency. Accidental bias is still bias and still creates a problem. This matter getting public attention in a manner that was largely civilized was useful. If it hadn't gone down this way, authors affects would still be trying to sort this out with Amazon a month from now, as demonstrated by several cases of books that were affected by this nonsense as early as February.
Being passive or silent even in the face of "accidental" bias is just as lame as condoning it.
The Guardian reports on it
Oh how I love it when a company says "it's policy" only to waffle later and declare no such policy exists!
I'm removing my Amazon wishlist, and I would like to state for the record that I will not buy anything from Amazon until the situation is rectified. For me, that means a public apology for allowing this to go on for months, for pretending like computers just up and do crazy things to embarrass you and for behaving as some customers/writers/artists are less worthy than others.
(I'm so deeply annoyed that we purchased our new Roomba through Amazon this past month. Ugh.)
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Date: 2009-04-13 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-14 05:18 am (UTC)http://www.pcworld.com/article/163024/hacker_claims_credit_for_amazons_gaythemed_book_glitch.html