Re-read the article, or at least the second paragraph. They (and some buddies or sock puppet accounts) were low-ranking other authors’ books, specifically targeting authors of color.
> “I boosted the rating of my book, bombed the ratings of several fellow debut authors, and left reviews that ranged from kind of mean to downright abusive,” she tweeted.
The sock puppet accounts were given stereotypically of-color names, and targeted authors were disproportionately of-color. There’s pretty clear indication of bias there.
> They posted a 31-page Google document containing screenshots of the activity of a number of accounts, with usernames including “Chantal B” and “Oh Se-Young”, suspected to have been created by Corrain.
> “There’s something extra despicable about using clearly POC [people of colour] names in the fake accounts to upvote every negative review on POC books so the top ones are all 1 star and 2 star. Like what in the yellow face,” Zhao tweeted. Many of the accounts linked on the document Zhao shared have now been deleted.
> The sock puppet accounts were given stereotypically of-color names, and targeted authors were disproportionately of-color. There’s pretty clear indication of bias there.
AIUI, authors in the subgenre are disproportionately non-white. If that's the case, it would be expected for those targeted to be similarly non-white.
None of this is a defense of the offender: she's definitely a big jerk. But it doesn't necessarily mean that we have to make every freakin' issue about race.
Break this down to just the facts presented. There are 31 pages of screenshots. They mention two names that were included that sound like POC. Note that they avoid saying anything beyond that. And they make sure to include the disclaimer that they are "suspected" to be sock puppets. They are clearly grasping at straws to bring race into this.
Is "Chantal" a stereotypical POC name in your opinion? News to me.
You have a lot more confidence on a bunch of people doing OSS "research" than I do. The quote itself says "suspected". I would go as far as to say that believing this was racially motivated (rather than just a scummy move) based on this "evidence" is weird, but not surprising.
>Is "Chantal" a stereotypical POC name in your opinion? News to me.
Interesting. I would have guessed that Chantal is a 90% black name, but I was wrong. It is only slightly more common for black women, and there are many whites with the name too. This may be a regional distinction.
The list of the authors targeted have all been people of color, iirc. Given publishing is like 75+% white, it's very improbable to just accidentally target half a dozen or more debuts and they just all happen to not be white. Additionally, there is a conversation that the author faked having with a "friend". The "friend" actually admits to targeting poc authors in order to "sabotage" cait.
Whilst I don't disagree with your conclusion, the sibling comments cover:
- The subgenre this all happened in has a very different makeup than western publishing broadly, and
- The authors targeted were not all 'people of colour'.
I agree she was likely secondarily racially motivated in some way - maybe due to trust in that subgenre, or the view in some area of the internet that 'people of colour' cannot be questioned. Or maybe she's just a racist killing two birds with one stone. She seems a serial liar, so I doubt we'll ever know for sure.
They’ve admitted this publicly. https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2023/dec/13/cait-corrain-p...
> “I boosted the rating of my book, bombed the ratings of several fellow debut authors, and left reviews that ranged from kind of mean to downright abusive,” she tweeted.