jridley@newsguy.com — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:19:06 GMT

A friend of mine says, and I agree:

A bunch of my friends are now threatening to boycott Amazon.com. I say: Don't do it! Amazon.com is about the only place out there dedicated to getting pretty much everything available for one-stop shopping. They're clearly not wanting to stop carrying the merchandise that is somewhat hard to find - unlike most other mainstream outlets.

My religious-minded cousins would *love* it if you boycotted Amazon.com. They don't want "that stuff" to be available *at all*. They want to be able to make censorship the law; they *hate* the First Amendment. They want to be able to make sure that their children don't even know "that stuff" exists. Amazon.com is on point in this fight; Amazon.com is where you can find anything, anytime, anywhere, and have it shipped right to your own PO Box.

It was a major clusterfuck, but it wasn't intentional. (nor was it targeted at any one area, despite what got the play.) (as I understand it, it was badly configured metadata + translation issues + holiday weekend + twitter/blogoverse = "OMG They're targeting us again!!!!")

From another friend, via various GBLT fora:

After hearing from people on the inside at Amazon, I am convinced it was in fact, a 'glitch,'" he says on his Web site. "Well, more like user error--some idiot editing code for one of the many international versions of Amazon mixed up the difference between 'adult' and 'erotic' and 'sexuality.' All the sites are tied together, so editing one affected all for blacklisting, and ta-da, you get the situation."

According to Daisey's inside sources, "A guy from Amazon France got confused on how he was editing the site, and mixed up 'adult,' which is the term they use for porn, with stuff like 'erotic' and 'sexuality.' That browse node editor is universal, so by doing that there he affected ALL of Amazon."

Comes down to the old maxim of never ascribe to malice what you can ascribe to stupidity.

Sigh. Here we go again.

jridley@newsguy.com — Fri, 03 Aug 2007 18:40:24 GMT

And again with LJ/6A screwing with fandom, and giving in to the 'think of the chyiiildren' hypocrites. grumble. I have too many RL friends who won't leave LJ until it gets truly obnoxious, but many of my fannish friends are moving. So here I am. I'm still me, same as I am on LJ and GJ.

jennfic

Sigh. Here we go again.