Amazon denies censoring site

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 14 Apr 2009 at 09:05

Amazon has admitted it's been "embarrassed" by a "cataloging error" that saw all gay and lesbian book titles delisted from its site.

The mistake caused a firestorm among users, with thousands of Twitter messges and dozens of Facebook groups springing up urging people to boycott the site.

The flames were fanned further when author Mark Prosbst contacted the company to find out why his book had been delisted and recieved the followed statement: "In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature."

As cries of censorship began to do the rounds, Amazon appeared to change tack, claiming the delisting was the result of a system glitch.

"This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection," Amazon admits in a statement.

"It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles - in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica.

"Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future."