
Amazon user feedback used for censorship - bendotc
http://www.marklynas.org/2011/07/the-god-species-withdrawn-from-amazon-censorship/
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acangiano
Running anynewbooks.com, this is only one of the abuses I routinely see
happening on Amazon. Most of the other abuses are related to the review
system. There are so many fake and spiteful reviews, that in many cases it's
really hard to judge a book based on the reviews.

I absolutely love Amazon, but they need preventive measures against these
forms of manipulation.

For example:

\- Prevent people who haven't bought the book from Amazon to leave a review.
People may still abuse the review system, but it will be less people, and
they'll make the author and publisher slightly richer in the process.

\- If you complain about a book not being as good as advertised, you need to
provide proof. Explain in detail what is wrong with it, and provide
photographic proof, a scan, or send the book back for inspection. Issue a
refund by all means, but don't just trust them and pull the book from the
shelves.

Right now, anyone could tank any new book published on Amazon with very little
work on their part.

~~~
jdminhbg
Amazon doesn't require a purchase to leave a review, but it's worth noting
that if have purchased it through Amazon, they'll tag your review with a
little "Amazon Confirmed Purchase" badge.

Requiring a purchase through Amazon would drastically cut down on the number
of reviews they would get; lots of people own lots of books and movies and
albums they purchased before Amazon existed and can give good reviews of them.
I don't think it's reasonable to expect Amazon to shut those reviews out.

~~~
acangiano
I meant it as a change for new books coming out, not for, say, your favorite
Pink Floyd album. Existing products/reviews should be, for better or for
worse, left in place of course.

~~~
axomhacker
Part of why Amazon is great is it being a place where you go to research
things. I'd hate it if they close reviews to only people who have bought stuff
at Amazon - it'll take away too many good reviews.

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sliverstorm
On the bright side, he can now legitimately market the book as "The book THEY
don't want you to read"

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bugsy
OK, so 5 people returned the book as "not as described."

Here is a question. If you are returning a product to amazon because you don't
like it, is the only way to get your shipping refunded and/or a refund at all
to check the box that says "not as described"?

It sounds like some people bought the book and didn't like it so they returned
it. If it's only 5 people it's not much of an organized conspiracy by
"fanatics" as he suggests.

Perhaps the problem is with amazon's return policies, and perhaps they should
not link "not as described" to cancellations with books from known publishers
as they would be if it was sacks of golden coins sold by some independent
vendor.

In a brick and mortar store, customers can evaluate more of a book than is
possible on amazon. Therefore it would be reasonable for amazon to have a
liberal refund policy.

~~~
nowarninglabel
I think this may be somewhat true. I've bought over 150 books now on Amazon,
and have only returned 1. That 1 was a Packt Publishing book which had a
fantastical description, but after I spent an hour leafing through it, it
turned out they had literally copy and pasted 1/4 of the material from
drupal.org. Thus, I returned it "not as described". However, this was prior to
Kindle.

As to your last point, I would have agreed, until Kindle came out, in which
case with most books I can now get a free preview, which is usually enough to
evaluate if a book is worth purchasing.

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eneveu
Amazon user feedback may sometimes be useful, though.

Last week, while browsing the Amazon page for Zed Shaw's "Learn Python The
Hard Way", I noticed that the only review was a 2-star review with a comment
along the lines of "I haven't read it, but since it's free on the
learnpythonthehardway website, don't bother buying it on Amazon!"* I thought
this was just wrong to "review" a book like this. Reviews should at least
address the content of a book...

I noticed the "0 out of 4 people found this review helpful", and promptly
added another "unhelpful" vote. I also decided to "report" the review (first
time I clicked this button). When I came back the next day, the review had
been removed. I have no idea whether other people reported it too, or whether
an Amazon employee manually checked the review. But it sure seems to be
effective, and I think it was useful here.

*: I haven't kept a copy of the exact comment.

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LiveTheDream
I'm getting a "Forbidden: you don't have permission to access" error on this
link.

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serichsen
I think that private companies need to establish due process just like
governments, especially when they are among the market leaders in their field.

That means that they need to check accusations first, before they damage their
customers.

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dwilson718
The author s looking for media hype and doesn't even have the facts. Put
simply, he's playing the martyr card and making a scene just to boost his own
sales.

telling people to tweet his page isnt so much a protest against amazon as it
is a Marketing Campaign. (a handful of re/tweets isnt going to suddenly incite
action on amazons part)

That aside, I dont think i'll be buying the book of someone who cries
censorship (/wolf) when he himself doesnt even know whats going on.

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Tichy
I don't see how Amazon could possibly handle this better. Having somebody read
every book before it goes on sale definitely wouldn't scale.

Perhaps they could offer to verify a book for a fee. Then again, the problem
might not be widespread enough.

I think I would set up my web sites in the same way: as soon as users would
push the red alert button for some item on my site, I would withdraw it from
public circulation and mark it for reviewing. On the upside, once it is
manually reviewed, it could not be flagged again. How else would you do it?

~~~
jamesbritt
_How else would you do it?_

Leave it in place until concrete evidence is presented.

~~~
Tichy
Problem is some stuff might actually be illegal. If you host a baby forum and
somebody posts kiddy porn, keeping it around for too long is a bad idea.

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tomp
That's the problem with monopolistic/dominant companies... They just don't
care. Neither about their customers, neither about their business partners.

G+ vs. FB FTW!

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wccrawford
Sounds like paranoia to me. Amazon is following their policies. Nothing to see
here.

~~~
robtoo
The complaint is not that Amazon are intentionally blocking certain
controversial material, but that _their policies are fundamentally flawed and
easily-abused_.

This also isn't the first time that one of Amazon's policies has been
abused... [http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/2009/04/12/amazon-under-
fir...](http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/2009/04/12/amazon-under-fire-for-
perceived-anti-gay-policy/)

