Amazon and friends

My favourite online retailer, amazon.com, has decided to play homophobic on easter weekend. It is reported in theconsumerist.com, that amazon removed many gay and lesbian books from the site-wide rankings and search results. The only books left are those about 'curing gays' and so on. I'm deeply surprised and offended that Amazon would even consider going down this censorship path and waging war against the gays. I bought all my textbooks, games and many other gadgets from amazon. I even have a Amazon prime account and just bought 2 books last week. I do hope that this problem will be ractify as soon as possible with sincere apology and maybe a generous donation or somesort to equility organizations.  Else, i just have to start advocating my friends to stop shopping on Amazon. Also, i would need to find alternative sites to shop for books.

This brings me to my next point - censorship. In the past, corporations and the government could unload the bad news on Friday afternoons to avoid scrutinies from the press. This practice then expanded to experimental corporate actions, negative attacks, and many other abnormalties. With the Internet, these actions are no more effective. People has made it a habit to read their favourite blog or news daily. Information now is not solely reliant on the media anymore as there are just too many people with freetime doing their own investigative journalism. Any attempt of censorship will not get a freepass as the people will be aware. For this reason, Hillary Clinton could not get away with setting up a proxy individual to ask her questions during her campaign trail. China also did not get away with the little girl's voice being dubbed during the opening ceremony of the Olympics. In the past, these actions are acceptable but we are living in the 21st century. Times have changed and corporations and the government should take note of this.  

This is Amazon's response to the censorship:

"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."

Looks like it's no system or software failure but rather intentional on Amazon's part. Those responsible for implementing this change should clearly be fired. I hope Amazon will give an adequate response on Monday.