tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30761342.post6369910705748357069..comments2023-11-09T00:37:40.824-08:00Comments on Fosco Lives!: Amazon's Attitude Toward HomosexualityFOSCOhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07238391886095765453noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30761342.post-35517860187880998812009-04-13T18:10:00.000-07:002009-04-13T18:10:00.000-07:00This will be my last comment - sorry to keep comin...This will be my last comment - sorry to keep coming back, but I've been really bothered by this so I keep looking for news and I'm just passing along stuff as I hear it... Anyway, there are now conflicting stories - see <A HREF="http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/04/13/amazon_fail_2/index.html" REL="nofollow">these</A> two <A HREF="http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2009/04/13/amazon_statement/index.html" REL="nofollow">posts</A> on Salon - coming out of Amazon (not surprising, since as others have noted they hardly want to admit either to being hacked or to doing this intentionally) - but the upshot is that there are apparently something close to 58,000 titles affected and they're fixing it now. Whether someone outside actually found a vulnerability and pranked them or someone in France (really? France is our scapegoat?) mistagged stuff or whatever, I think the possibility that this is a corporate policy is vanishingly small. As the Amazon spokesperson put it, "embarrassing and ham-fisted," definitely; the good news is I think it really was a coding debacle rather than a homophobic salvo. So while I'm still irked, as others have noted, that they haven't just apologized to the writers and readers affected, I'm taking some small solace in the current look of things.<br /><br />-AEJAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30761342.post-69336727160376883762009-04-13T16:36:00.000-07:002009-04-13T16:36:00.000-07:00More at Ars Technica.
-AEJ<A HREF="http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2009/04/amazon-rank-kerfuffle-policy-change-glitch-or-troll.ars" REL="nofollow">More</A> at Ars Technica.<br /><br />-AEJAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30761342.post-71865380397759394262009-04-13T14:23:00.000-07:002009-04-13T14:23:00.000-07:00This is an interesting wrinkle - a hacker is claim...This is an interesting wrinkle - a hacker is <A HREF="http://i.gizmodo.com/5210424/hacker-claims-he-shoved-amazon-into-the-closet-using-inappropriate-flag-exploit" REL="nofollow">claiming credit</A> for this whole thing, saying he created an exploit that takes advantage of Amazon's "Mark this as inappropriate" tag. Of course, I'd be happy to hear that this was indeed not something Amazon did itself, so I'm trying not to allow my preference for this to be true to outweigh reasonable skepticism; still, I would say it's plausible. (Both because this type of filtering would be idiotic as a business move, and Amazon isn't usually idiotic, and because there is a whiff of mischief about the whole thing - from the beginning I've thought this had to be the work of an individual, whether within Amazon or not, rather than corporate policy.)<BR/><BR/>-AEJAnonymousnoreply@blogger.com