Slide 1: anatomy of a scandal:
amazonfail 2009
Slide 3: This Easter we ekend, a young adult n ovelist name d Mark R. Probst noticed that his book, The Filly, had disappe are d from the sales rankings on Amazon. He soon disc overed t hat hundreds of ot her gay and lesbian theme d books had lost their rankings as well.
Slide 5: And then…
Slide 7: amazon said:
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.
Slide 8: othe r people said…
“The Profes sional Bachelor Dating Guide: How To Exploit Her Inner Psycho” is deemed appropriate enough to keep its sal es ranking, while “The Art Of Meeting Women: A Guide For Gay Women” is stripped of its sal es ranking… (Jezebel.com)
Due to removing sale rankings, “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality,” is now the top result for a search on keyword “homosexuality” from Amazon’s homepage. (gertymac, Jezebel.com)
Slide 9: “This bigoted, sexist, misogynist, homophobic, trans phobic policy is one of the worst cases of onl ine censorship I’ve ever heard of…” (greeneyedfem, jezebel.com)
“LOL PATRIARCHY. YOU NEVER CEASE TO HELP ME INFLICT BRAIN DAMAGE UPON MYSELF.” (shamrockette, jezebel.com)
Slide 10: “Everyone is as suming…there mus t be some conspiracy…my s uspicion is that it was a series of web lackeys covering their asses against complaints from evangelicals…mix that with a few actual errors (and unconscious bias)… all the furor reeks of t infoil hats .” (verdan, jezebel.com)
some other people said…
“Amazon… state d official ly that it wa s… a "ha m-fisted catal ogi ng err or ",…one l esson Amazon should lea rn from the incident, it' s tha t with T witter ar ound, your PR monkey s nee d to b e sca nning for hashtags fa ster than ever , and officiall y resp ond ing even fa ster stil l. And i n a classroom close by , ma y be the I nternet could lea rn to jump to mor e l ogi ca l concl usions tha n ' AM AZON HATES GAY S ! OMGWT F! ‘” (cr ave.cnet.co.uk)
“there's an off chance that this was a cheap algorithm fix rather than a deliberate and pernicious injustice… sometimes an initial throwaway tech fix blows up into an almighty problem.”(limber, jezebel.com)
Slide 13: (or is it?)
Slide 14: Was it reall y a “gl itch”?
A “ham-fisted catal oguing” error?
Did someone get l ost in the code and make a mis take with a complicated matching al gorithm?
Or maybe an “experiment”?
Was the algorithm based on bias?
Slide 15: some OTHER people claim ed t hat it was a troll who hacked into amazo n be cause he was ang ry at craig slist which wouldn’t let him advert ise fo r “girls t o do heroin wit h.” (makes se nse, right ? wait .)
Slide 16: What, exactly, is the point of gendered tags in the first place? What’s the difference between “adul t,” “erotic,” and “s exuality,” in terms of categorizing books?
Slide 17: Everyone was angry because this seemed like an example of Amazon attempting to decrease the visibility of books about gays, feminism, female sexuality and other inclusive and sex positive subjects. But isn’t the tagging itself an example of technology reinforcing gender and sexuality binaries? What’s the point of a matching algorithm that tells me I’ll really enjoy something? Does it know me? Are we friends?
Slide 18: Really, what people were angry about was t rust . They trus ted A mazon. They thought A mazon wo uld ste er them right.
They t hought A mazon was an all-kno wing emp irical godmachine . It isn’t . It ’s run by people, and people live and breathe gender and sexuality dicho tom ies. Maybe, saying it was a programming e rro r isn’t enough.
Slide 19: Programming errors are human errors.
