Reddit reviews Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America

Isn't that a little premature? I we don't even know what's really going on yet. There are a lot of products on Amazon, some of which are provided by third-parties, etc.

What evidence is there that Amazon is doing this deliberately or systematically?

I don't see any mention of "adult" in the page for "Unfriendly Fire"... am I missing something?

The Kindle Edition of Unfriendly Fire does have a sales rank.

This could easily be an accident or error. Let's not get out the pitchforks and torches until we give everyone time to sort things out.

Edit: Unfriendly Fire's sales rank has been restored. Plus, Amazon PR has been saying this was a glitch from the beginning.

Edit 2: Sources are now reporting that a hacker actually attacked Amazon through its "report inappropriate content" tool, causing the products to be removed automatically.

http://www.amazon.com/Unfriendly-Fire-Undermines-Military-Weakens/dp/0312373481/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239554070&sr=1-1

You're being downmodded because you apparently didn't read vinneh's response to yours very carefully. But since I was initially confused too, let me explain exactly how to check this.

Check out this link to the King James Bible on amazon.com and scroll down to the "Product Details" section. Do you see the "Amazon.com Sales Rank" and "Popular in these categories" sections?

Ok. Now click on the link vinneh provided for Unfriendly Fire and do the same. Notice that it has no sales rank, and no "popular in these categories" section!

That's the difference. From what I've been able to glean, Amazon.com internally has a flag that classifies some books as adult and removes them from sales rankings. Presumably this is because pornography sells very well, and if it were allowed to be ranked then it would continuously dominate Amazon.com's bestseller lists, etc, giving less, um, open-minded customers the impression that Amazon is just a pornography site.

The issue here is that Amazon.com has apparently classified anything even remotely gay themed (Unfriendly Fire is about what the author considers a policy error and its ramifications in the US military more than it is about gay rights, for example) as Adult internally, removing it from the rankings.

So for example, if "Unfriendly Fire" sold a bazillion gajillion copies it still would never show up on Amazon.com's bestseller lists, which seems to be what everyone is up in arms about.

The thing about stuff not showing up in searches appears to be an explanation of one of the possible ramifications of the adult flag in certain cases, but so far I haven't seen any examples of these books not showing up in searches. I think most people who are saying that books aren't showing up in searches were so overcome by hysteria that they didn't bother checking first.

But that doesn't change the fact that putting a book like "Unfriendly Fire" in the same category as porn because it is vaguely gay-themed is profoundly screwed up. I mean, some erotic gay romance I could see -- that scandalous and heterosexually themed DH Lawrence classic appears to have the adult flag set as well -- but a book about military policy?

Come on, that's ridiculous.

EDIT: In the case of "Unfriendly Fire", at least, it appears that Amazon has addressed the issue. See r3gis' reply to me.