Including me. Jump the gun, moi? Someone has now claimed responsibility via a plausible method (bot-tagging using the metadata to select books to 'report as inappropriate' which Amazon allowed random users to do up until this morning). So (a) I shouldn't get worked up about things until I've woken up properly and had time to pay attention and (b) can anyone say 'random polls of the browsing public are a bad method of policy-formation'?. I don't necessarily accept that the moron who claimed responsibility actually did it, but the method he describes does seem plausible.
[Original post below:
Sigh. I'm not sure whether this applies to Amazon UK and the other non-US sites or just the US one, and don't have the energy to check; it doesn't much matter, in a way, because boycotting and complaining to the non-US sites is still probably useful activity to change the policy in the latter case. Anyway, what I'm talking about is the fact that Amazon have changed the way their search and rankings work, and books they regard as 'adult' no longer show up. As far as anyone can tell, basically any book with the faintest hint of an LGBT theme qualifies (including all non-fiction dealing with related topics). Het couples need to have pretty explicit on-page sex to hit the filter, but even the existence of a non-het pairing seems to be sufficient. I don't have the energy to rant properly.]
[Original post below:
Sigh. I'm not sure whether this applies to Amazon UK and the other non-US sites or just the US one, and don't have the energy to check; it doesn't much matter, in a way, because boycotting and complaining to the non-US sites is still probably useful activity to change the policy in the latter case. Anyway, what I'm talking about is the fact that Amazon have changed the way their search and rankings work, and books they regard as 'adult' no longer show up. As far as anyone can tell, basically any book with the faintest hint of an LGBT theme qualifies (including all non-fiction dealing with related topics). Het couples need to have pretty explicit on-page sex to hit the filter, but even the existence of a non-het pairing seems to be sufficient. I don't have the energy to rant properly.]