Twitter is great fun and I’ve been using it for a while now. Yet, until today I have not seen the way it can make people jump into action with such incredible speed. #Amazonfail appeared over my Twitter feed. For the folks who are not yet in the know of the matter it was recently discovered that Amazon.com was tampering with the ratings of any material they deemed as gay. There were a number of people in my circle of friends who set things rolling with a link to this piece by author Mark R Probst which describes how Amazon.com have been quietly removing the sales rankings from books with gay content. Writer Craig Seymour notes it happening to a book of his back in February. They claim this is done as part of their policy of removing sales ranking from anything deemed “adult” and is intended to help (ie: protect by blanking) customers who don’t want to see “adult” material turn up in their searches. A number of people I know are boycotting Amazon.com as a matter of principle.
I find it quite hard to believe that in this day and age a company of this size would do something like this. I thought censorship of this level was a thing of the past. Too bad for them I was about to place an order with them for my digital camera.