elise blas AND librar*

Rather than dwell on Amazon’s censorship “glitch,” I’d like to discuss how they are handling it. Rather, how they are trying to side step any accusations that they have a moral agenda. Have they formally apologized yet? Realizing it was most likely not they who did it, an entire community has been singled out for no good reason. A “Sorry, we’re trying to fix this” would help. It won’t make it better and it won’t win back some customers who have been lost.

I do have a personal stake in this. I live in a town where there is nothing available. I have to drive an hour to wander around a large city, hoping to stumble across what I need. Soon I’m moving to a smaller town with fewer options. I like shopping online. I like amazon. The best part is finding a book I want for a dollar from an individual vendor. I used to sell books on amazon and loved that I got an extra $20 a month for it. I’ve recently come to my senses and have stopped selling my own books.

I don’t think Amazon did this act of censorship. I don’t think Amazon and Jeff Bezos wants to impose a hetero-normative culture on us. Maybe it was a disgruntled employee. Maybe there was a hack. Who knows. I’m just glad they are working to fix it.

On another note, I’ve been getting spam comments like crazy, as in 50 in a day’s time, so I’ve started requiring commenters to register. Those of you who read this have at least one other way of getting in touch with me, so let me know if you have any problems!

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This entry was posted by Elise on Wednesday, April 15th, 2009 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.