Monday, April 13, 2009

"Adult Content" #amazonfail

Here's an interesting article that points out the inadequacy of Amazon's explanation that the sudden disappearance of rankings on thousands of books was some sort of glitch.  Commentators and authors observe that when someone receives an email from Amazon claiming their book was removed from rankings due to adult content, and then later claims that it was a glitch, something isn't right.  

This brings us to the troubling subject of adult content.  Should adult content be restricted?  If so, is America willing to give up its Playboy magazine?  I'm thinking no, and the fact that Playboy didn't end up glitched off the ratings system is a clear sign that this is more sinister than Amazon's explanation allows for.  (It also suggests that white male power is alive and well.)  Many have noticed that male-oriented sexually explicit material didn't go away, including those that included sexual violence.  But gay titles did 'mysteriously' disappear, even if they had no sexual situations in them.

I'm interested to see what develops from this.  In the meantime, I expect Amazon to begin dodging liability.  Curiouser and curiouser.

2 comments:

The Moody Minstrel said...

Selective morality has long been an old-fashioned, red-blooded American tradition.

[tw]BUT THEY'RE ALL JUST A BUNCH OF FAAAAAAGS!!![/tw]

Kami said...

Yeah. The lucky thing is that there was such an uproar about it, if there was the intent to remove books from the rank system, Amazon will do everything in its power to make it appear like an accident. This is quite a bit of progress from the days not so long ago when the uproar would have been over people realizing that 'those kind' of books are online and demanding that all such books with any kind of non-straight or non-pink (only kisses allowed in the book) sexual content. So that part is yay.