Sunday, April 12th, 2009

Time	Event
11:05a	Amazon thinks you should be protected from GLTB novels I got this from rydra_wong here: Amazon is stripping the sales ranks from GLBT books, thus preventing them from showing up in some bestseller lists and searches (and potentially directly damaging their sales), on the grounds that they are "adult" material. (This is regardless of whether they contain any explicit sex. Meanwhile, books with explicit heterosexual sex scenes retain their sales rank, as long as they're not overtly marketed as "erotica".) More details here ETA: A petition Twitter - #amazonfail Roundup Post, includes posts linking to what books are losing their sales ratings. Contact Amazon's exec customer service dept at ecr@amazon.com to let them know what you think. Customer service phone number is 1-800-201-7575 From arionhunter in the comments, FYI: Not only LGBT books are going under - feminist and general sexuality books are having their ranks stripped as well. Oh, those silly disabled people, trying to be intimate like the rest of us. [I own that book linked. It's one of the few books that explicitly talks about sex for PWD and includes sections on kink.] ETA 2: Amazon Blames Glitch, blah blah. The PW site went down about five minutes after it hit twitter, so here is the text: ( blah blah, it's someone else's fault, blah ) ETA 3: I shoulda been a better OP and been posting updates as they came in. This started in February This is not a Glitch Bantown theory [I don't buy this theory, but YMMV] Dear Author does a timeline Dear Author explains metatagging [This is the theory I buy] Troll claims responsibility [Which I really don't buy, because a) It's Weev and b) it's been debunked. And c) because it only works if you think the only books targetted are GLTB books, and it wasn't. Debunking of Troll-code (272 Comments | Comment on this)
6:14p	American citizens deported, but that's okay, b/c they're 'criminals' (The links here go to a Yahoo!News story and to the related "Buzz" page (whateverthehell that is), and I don't see a permalink to the latter, so let me know if they get broken.) The AP reports that dozens--possibly hundreds--of US citizens have been caught up in the crackdowns on illegal immigration across the country. American citizens have been jailed and deported to their supposed "home" countries under suspicion of being illegals. The most vulnerable, of course, are those whose poverty, youth, mental illness, or difficulties with language mean they may not have the necessary documentation or clear understanding of what's going on. So they're deported. (The first case is of a mentally ill and illiterate man who was arrested on minor trespassing charges and deported to Tiajuana. It took his family 3 months to find him, while he slept on the streets.) All of this is definitely fodder for unfunnybusiness. But in a fit of masochism, I decided to go and read the comments. I thought certainly that others would be outraged by this. Oh, naivete... ( Cut for length and a quick rundown of the myriad ways in which douchebaggery is celebrated ) Current Mood: OMGWTF (16 Comments | Comment on this)

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