Reader Brian Wells sends this report:
John, I love your columns and thought that what I just encountered at Amazon may be interesting to you.
I was looking at lawn mowers and noticed that Amazon suggested a book based on my looking at a mower. The book is called “Unfit for Command”. I thought it odd that a book was suggested so I clicked on it and found that it is a book highly critical of John Kerry. Considering that I never buy books of this sort from Amazon, I wondered how it became a suggestion.
On the page describing the book, I noticed that the user reviews were particularly nasty in their ad hominem attacks on Mr. Kerry. Since that is not usually allowed at Amazon I looked further and found this at the top of the reviews:
Important note from Amazon.com: We’ve decided to suspend our normal customer review policies and rules for this title. For example, we usually prohibit ad hominem attacks. That policy in particular seems to be incompatible with presidential election year politics. Therefore, short of obscenities, reviews on this book are now a free-for-all. We take no responsibility for the following discussion. Aren’t presidential election years great? Have fun!
As far as I can tell, this is the only book where this notice is posted!
Lastly, this book is listed as being Amazon’s top seller. I would find that extremely hard to believe (maybe they measure the “top seller” over a span of 10 minutes and then list it…or maybe I am just getting even more paranoid.) Looking at the top seller list it has several other titles that indicate to me that either Amazon has become the nation’s leading Conservative bookseller or that numbers and marketing at Amazon are being manipulated for political reasons.
Something stinks and I am seriously going to consider using other sites for my shopping.
…Just thought you might be interested.
I’m sure we’ll find out how this works out for them in that forum, won’t we?
Sometime in mid-August, many Amazon reviewers found that their reviews of Unfit for Command were not posting on the customer review board. So many reviews were coming in that there was an apparent backlog while human editors rather than the usual automated software editor took a look at each one.
The comment about “gloves off” may be a reflection of the impossibility of personally reviewing each submission for a widely-red book that is by nature going to cause rancor–Amazon.com may have relented on ad hominem standards as much as for feasibility as “presidential election year politics.”
Your explanation does not make any logical sense. The automated reviews check against Amazon’s policy regarding what is permissible, etc. If things don’t pass, well then rewrite them.
Note that they still will not allow profanity, so someone or something is still reviewing the submitted text.
You explanation would be easier to beleieve if other books had the same “new” policy. Note that Amazon itself does not give an explanation like yours; in fact the one they do give makes it quite partisan in that it only applies to this one book.
No, someone at Amazon is using a commercial site to make their own views paramount. Up until now I trusted Amazon’s top seller list, their reviews, and their “suggestion” list. Now I see that all of these can be manipulated for other reasons. My business now goes elsewhere.
Interesting that Mr. Wells finds it so hard to believe that Unfit is Amazon’s number 1 selling book. If you should check out the New York Times you will find that they have joined the conspiracy.
Brian Wells points are well taken. Why did Amazon change the policy for one book, a book critical of John Kerry? How about changing the policy for books that are negative towards George Bush. Many of the “Unfit for Command” reviewers that have posted negative reviews and ad hominem attacks admit that they never read the book; they then post the same negative review multiple times. How is this policy helping Amazon’s customers; from what I have observed, they are losing some customers because of it.