I'm Confused.

Over the weekend, there was considerable hew and cry over Amazon.com's apparent removal of the sales rankings from books they consider to be "adult content" (which included many gay- and lesbian-themed books). Hysterical, indignant complaints were made that this would have the effect of making these books impossible to find through the basic search functions available at Amazon.com’s website (and that did happen, briefly), but it took all of ten seconds (and a search for Lady Chatterly’s Lover) to discover that you shouldn't necessarily believe every hysterical, indignant complaint you read. The company claimed this was all in error (and not, in fact, limited to gay- and lesbian-themed titles), and that steps were being taken to address the issue, though that explanation was widely regarded as inadequate.

Apparently, this has been going on for months, though nobody ― except for the authors who follow their own Amazon.com sales rankings ― seemed to notice. (I used to obsessively follow the sales rankings of the books that I published, but I got bored with that and gave up after about two weeks.)

Now, someone has made the claim that, by exploiting a weakness in Amazon's systems, where a small number of complaints can have a disproportionately large impact, he was able to cause virtually every gay- and lesbian-themed book available to be marked as "inappropriate content." Amazon still claims responsibility for the problem, though the option to report inappropriate content seems to have been removed (at least, I can't seem to find it).

I agree that there are issues here worth discussing ― I just don't have much patience for the predictable (and predictably premature) calls for boycotts and furious waving of Internet torches and pitchforks.