Amazon.com removed sales rankings from thousands of books with LGBTQ+ themes and adult content, claiming it was a technical glitch after widespread public outcry and accusations of censorship.
Over the Easter weekend of April 2009, Amazon.com removed sales rankings from thousands of books, particularly those with LGBTQ+ themes and adult content. The incident began when author Mark Probst noticed that gay romance novels had lost their sales rankings and contacted Amazon for explanation. Amazon initially responded that they exclude 'adult material' from searches and bestseller lists 'in consideration of our entire customer base.' Books affected included classics like James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain, E.M. Forster's Maurice, and Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. Meanwhile, books like Playboy centerfold collections and Mein Kampf retained their rankings. The incident sparked massive online outrage, with the hashtag #amazonfail trending on Twitter and over 10,000 people signing petitions. After initially claiming it was a 'glitch,' Amazon later issued a statement calling it an 'embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error' affecting 57,310 books across categories including Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica. The company said the problem occurred globally and affected both sales rankings and search visibility. Some authors reported similar issues dating back to February 2009, suggesting this was not an isolated incident.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
Unequal treatment of individuals or groups by AI, often based on race, gender, or other sensitive characteristics, resulting in unfair outcomes and unfair representation of those groups.
Human
Due to a decision or action made by humans
Other
Without clearly specifying the intentionality
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed