Please note, this post created by Claire Stokoe prior to leaving the company.

Over the Bank holiday a pink storm raged against Amazon when all their books on the topic of Gay lifestyles, Health and Sexual reproduction disappeared from the listings. Gay authors and activists instantly thought that this was a stealthy extension of the company’s policy concerning adult content.

And they weren’t alone. Within hours the Twitter community headed up by Author Neil Gaiman had taken up the baton, and the hashtag #Amazonfail was being swamped with those angry at what they considered to be a breach of online freedom.

Neil Giuliano, president of the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, says in a statement: “GLAAD has reached out to Amazon.com and they indicate this was an error, so we expect to start seeing evidence of its correction immediately.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/04/13/blogs-and-twitter-coin-amazonfail/

The issue impacted around 57,310 books globally and has been blamed on both a hacker and a glitch. Former Amazonian Mike Daisey has stated on the Seattlepi blog that “Someone was editing the category systems inside of Amazon.fr, made an error, and that system is global, so it propagated everywhere. I have no insight as to anyone’s nationality, or whether it was a language gap, or anything of that nature”.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archives/166329.asp?source=mypi

What is more interesting to come out of this is “that everyone in publishing entrusts their rankings and status to a single provider. That’s the story no one likes thinking about in publishing” and also that this provider isn’t managing its reputation properly online, which for a web business of its magnitude is unforgivable and should now be on Amazons “seriously to do” list for 2009.

It is kind of amusing that Amazon called their action “ham fisted”, surely that shouldn’t be allowed?