More on #AmazonFAIL: Hackers, misogyny, homophobia and you
[For background on what AmazonFAIL is, see my article at the Women's Media Center.]
As the day has worn on, more parts of the story are unfolding, and all these little tidbits at the intersection of tech, culture, media and commerce are more than fascinating. This is the kind of story that sends me down the rabbit hole of musing for days.
Let’s start with the tech side of things
According to Jessica Valenti (and her publisher, Seal Press), Amazon reps are claiming that this is a purely internal issue caused by the mysteriously “glitch” spoken of last night. I don’t think the reps know what they’re talking about, frankly. What I think is going on: there is a severe vulnerability in the Amazon flagging-for-inappropriate system, and it’s been found and exploited by one or more nerds with too much time on their hands. Amazon’s mistake, vis a vis the brave new world of social media, is two-fold:
