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	ram 2009-06-01 12:21 am UTC (link)
	Playing devil's advocate here, but is it possible that they had the word "gay" flagged to prevent it being used in a derogatory manner and/or as an insult on the site? I'm not entirely sure how these flagging systems work. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	yoritomo_reiko 2009-06-01 12:24 am UTC (link)
	I'd be interested to find out if it's flagged for all user comment systems. It's not like people wouldn't use it in a derogatory manner to describe a book they don't like. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	sheep 2009-06-01 08:55 am UTC (link)
	I couldn't finish the entry, but did he mention if using homosexual was a problem? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	yoritomo_reiko 2009-06-01 09:40 am UTC (link)
	From what I remember, no. He wanted to put that he was gay but Amazon wouldn't let him post his author profile with the word in it. He let Amazon know and within twenty-four hours it was changed so that he could. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	deliciouschaos 2009-06-01 12:29 am UTC (link)
	I have a suspicion that they did that without thinking that it might annoy people who wanted to use the word properly, as follows the law of "incompetence is often indistinguishable from malice". I also wonder if people can just get around it by putting an invisible tag inside it or something. (Reply to this)(Parent)

sheep
2009-06-01 08:54 am UTC (link)

That was my first thought, or they have an idiot with an agenda on their staff. If the last one is the case, then they need to use software that tracks changes better.

But I couldn't read the entry because it kept trying to start up IE, which used all my RAM, and it didn't matter how many times I tried to close the page with 'End Task'. In the end I had to shut down my laptop and start again.

It seems fine now, though I am running a virus scan, but I'm not going back to finish the entry.

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	zyna_kat 2009-06-01 11:29 am UTC (link)
	or they have an idiot with an agenda on their staff That was my first thought. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	jujubee 2009-06-01 10:36 pm UTC (link)
	Mine, too. (Reply to this)(Parent)

vorpal_blade
2009-06-01 12:53 pm UTC (link)

Even if that's true, it's impractical to just flag anything that could be used in a derogatory way or even certain words that are considered obscene in some contexts, because there are a lot of contexts in which the same terms are not derogatory or considered obscene. I've seen more than one message board, for instance, where the word "cock" had been flagged but not as a stand-alone word only, which meant that even if it appeared inside another word, like 'cocktail' or 'peackock' those four letters in the word were replaced with '****', which is just stupid. (You can also cock your head to the side, tell a cock-and-bull story and cock-up a job.) Given their recent history, it sounds more like an employee with an axe to grind than a well-intentioned attempt to protect gay people from being offended by the equivalent of "Oh, that's so gay," as if that would appear in a profile the author had written anyway.

"Murray O'Brien has written seven books about the Johnsons, but this isn't one of those soap opera-ish family saga things, that would be so gay..."

Amazon has already shown that they have no interest in steering people away from books about how to "recover" from gayness, so it's doubtful that those books would be a reason for this policy either. Also, their fauxpologies suck big time. They need to do the Mea Culpa Mambo both for this and the other fiasco, but they seem to be allergic to anything like that. More reasons that I'm doing all of my online book, DVD and CD purchases through other websites now.

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julian_black
2009-06-01 05:29 pm UTC (link)

They need to do the Mea Culpa Mambo both for this and the other fiasco, but they seem to be allergic to anything like that.

Yes, this.

I've stopped shopping at Amazon, or selling used books through them, and I deleted the contents of my wishlist. I'm incredibly disappointed with how they handled #amazonfail, and their "LOL glitch! LOL those wacky French! SRY, BBS!" way of brushing it off just--NO.

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	dottiness 2009-06-01 08:48 pm UTC (link)
	This is pretty much exactly what I was wondering, honestly. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	darsynia 2009-06-01 01:49 am UTC (link)
	It really looks to me like they have an employee with a mission or something. Though it does remind me of Diablo II after a major patch one year where in chat, any instance of the word 'Jew' was censored--until it was pointed out by numerous people, myself included, that there's a big difference between a word that's genuinely offensive and a word that's used offensively. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	the__ivorytower 2009-06-01 04:02 am UTC (link)
	One of my friends asserted that the best way to get your character's banned was naming them NiggerJewNazi. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	sandglass 2009-06-01 02:26 am UTC (link)
	Damnit, Amazon, XBox Live policies are not a good thing to copy. At least they have enough rampant homophobia to justify banning "gay". (Reply to this)

	chaootaku 2009-06-01 03:16 am UTC (link)
	Though I can't blame anyone for questioning them after last time, I really think this one's just an innocent (though badly timed) oversight. (Reply to this)

ashenmote
2009-06-01 07:00 am UTC (link)

It's nice that they repair this stuff if asked, but from the "it's fixed now, carry on" response with it's distinct lack of explanations or apologies you'd think it is actually the job of their customers and business partners to keep them from discriminating against gays and restore the status quo.

I would say more, but I can't without using the name of this one inappropriate online bookshop.

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	sheep 2009-06-01 08:48 am UTC (link)
	Amazon customer service can be frustrating if you want answers outside of a tidy little box. I don't know how many times I replied with 'don't copy and paste a standard reply' and still got a mostly irrelevant copy paste reply. I'm grateful that I rarely have to contact them, because usually it all runs smoothly. But when it doesn't D: (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	ashenmote 2009-06-01 10:49 am UTC (link)
	It would help a little bit already if they added a "We're really sorry for this." copy&paste module to their range of options. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	aerobot 2009-06-01 02:28 pm UTC (link)
	Normally, I could accept that this was a misguided attempt to stop a derogatory word from being used, but with the recent ranking fiasco? Yeah, sorry Amazon, no benefit of the doubt here. (Reply to this)

	esclaramonde 2009-06-01 04:24 pm UTC (link)
	I'm still giving them the benefit of the doubt and such, but they really do need to step up to the plate and apologize properly for these issues. (Reply to this)(Thread)

	rosehiptea 2009-06-01 09:47 pm UTC (link)
	Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel about it. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	brennalarose 2009-06-02 01:08 pm UTC (link)
	Thirded. Also, it would take me forever to move my wish list and things over to another site. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	vzg 2009-06-05 05:53 am UTC (link)
	I may give 'em the benefit of the doubt, but I'm still not using Amazon until they suck it up and apologize, which pretty much means I'm not using Amazon. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	felinephoenix 2009-06-01 09:39 pm UTC (link)
	For the love of god, Amazon. Whether you're making consistently idiotic mistakes, or you have an employee with an agenda, you need to fix this crap and apologize for it. Properly. And don't do it again. (Reply to this)