Skip to Content
logologo
AI Incident Database
Open TwitterOpen RSS FeedOpen FacebookOpen LinkedInOpen GitHub
Open Menu
Discover
Submit
  • Welcome to the AIID
  • Discover Incidents
  • Spatial View
  • Table View
  • List view
  • Entities
  • Taxonomies
  • Submit Incident Reports
  • Submission Leaderboard
  • Blog
  • AI News Digest
  • Risk Checklists
  • Random Incident
  • Sign Up
Collapse
Discover
Submit
  • Welcome to the AIID
  • Discover Incidents
  • Spatial View
  • Table View
  • List view
  • Entities
  • Taxonomies
  • Submit Incident Reports
  • Submission Leaderboard
  • Blog
  • AI News Digest
  • Risk Checklists
  • Random Incident
  • Sign Up
Collapse

Incident 15: Amazon Censors Gay Books

Description: Amazon's book store "cataloging error" led to books containing gay and lesbian themes to lose their sales ranking, therefore losing visibility on the sales platform.

Tools

New ReportNew ReportNew ResponseNew ResponseDiscoverDiscoverView HistoryView History

Entities

View all entities
Alleged: Amazon developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Amazon Customers.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
15
Report Count
24
Incident Date
2008-05-23
Editors
Sean McGregor
Applied Taxonomies
CSETv0, CSETv1, GMF, MIT

CSETv1 Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Incident Number

The number of the incident in the AI Incident Database.
 

15

CSETv0 Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Problem Nature

Indicates which, if any, of the following types of AI failure describe the incident: "Specification," i.e. the system's behavior did not align with the true intentions of its designer, operator, etc; "Robustness," i.e. the system operated unsafely because of features or changes in its environment, or in the inputs the system received; "Assurance," i.e. the system could not be adequately monitored or controlled during operation.
 

Unknown/unclear

Physical System

Where relevant, indicates whether the AI system(s) was embedded into or tightly associated with specific types of hardware.
 

Software only

Level of Autonomy

The degree to which the AI system(s) functions independently from human intervention. "High" means there is no human involved in the system action execution; "Medium" means the system generates a decision and a human oversees the resulting action; "low" means the system generates decision-support output and a human makes a decision and executes an action.
 

High

Nature of End User

"Expert" if users with special training or technical expertise were the ones meant to benefit from the AI system(s)’ operation; "Amateur" if the AI systems were primarily meant to benefit the general public or untrained users.
 

Amateur

Public Sector Deployment

"Yes" if the AI system(s) involved in the accident were being used by the public sector or for the administration of public goods (for example, public transportation). "No" if the system(s) were being used in the private sector or for commercial purposes (for example, a ride-sharing company), on the other.
 

No

Lives Lost

Were human lives lost as a result of the incident?
 

No

MIT Taxonomy Classifications

Machine-Classified
Taxonomy Details

Risk Subdomain

A further 23 subdomains create an accessible and understandable classification of hazards and harms associated with AI
 

1.1. Unfair discrimination and misrepresentation

Risk Domain

The Domain Taxonomy of AI Risks classifies risks into seven AI risk domains: (1) Discrimination & toxicity, (2) Privacy & security, (3) Misinformation, (4) Malicious actors & misuse, (5) Human-computer interaction, (6) Socioeconomic & environmental harms, and (7) AI system safety, failures & limitations.
 
  1. Discrimination and Toxicity

Entity

Which, if any, entity is presented as the main cause of the risk
 

Human

Timing

The stage in the AI lifecycle at which the risk is presented as occurring
 

Post-deployment

Intent

Whether the risk is presented as occurring as an expected or unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
 

Unintentional

Incident Reports

Reports Timeline

+1
'Gay writing' falls foul of Amazon sales ranking system
+18
Why We’re Not Buying Amazon’s Gay Book ‘Glitch’
+2
Amazon censoring books with Adult Content? Feels like the 1950s...
Amazon hides erotic novels from appearing in its search results
'Gay writing' falls foul of Amazon sales ranking system

'Gay writing' falls foul of Amazon sales ranking system

theguardian.com

Why We’re Not Buying Amazon’s Gay Book ‘Glitch’

Why We’re Not Buying Amazon’s Gay Book ‘Glitch’

queerty.com

Amazon Censorship - Who is affected?

Amazon Censorship - Who is affected?

meta-writer.livejournal.com

Amazon de-ranks so-called adult books, including National Book Award winner

Amazon de-ranks so-called adult books, including National Book Award winner

latimesblogs.latimes.com

Amazonfail: A Call to Boycott Amazon

Amazonfail: A Call to Boycott Amazon

edrants.com

Amazon removing "adult" (read gay) books from searches

Amazon removing "adult" (read gay) books from searches

whyweprotest.net

Amazon Censors Its Rankings & Search Results to Protect Us Against GLBT Books

Amazon Censors Its Rankings & Search Results to Protect Us Against GLBT Books

dearauthor.com

Author Zoe Margolis Replies to Amazon's alleged censorship

Author Zoe Margolis Replies to Amazon's alleged censorship

digitaljournal.com

Amazon.com de-ranks LGBT books, blames "glitch"

Amazon.com de-ranks LGBT books, blames "glitch"

en.wikinews.org

Gay and Lesbian Books Lose Amazon Sales Rank For Some Reason

Gay and Lesbian Books Lose Amazon Sales Rank For Some Reason

consumerist.com

#AmazonFail : Why Did Amazon.com Delist Gay, Lesbian Books?

#AmazonFail : Why Did Amazon.com Delist Gay, Lesbian Books?

wiredpen.com

Amazon 'Glitch' Delists Gay-Themed Books, Interwebs Cry Foul

Amazon 'Glitch' Delists Gay-Themed Books, Interwebs Cry Foul

wired.com

Amazon.com says it has fixed error that removed gay, lesbian sales rankings

Amazon.com says it has fixed error that removed gay, lesbian sales rankings

seattletimes.com

Amazon criticized for deranking 'adult' books

Amazon criticized for deranking 'adult' books

cnet.com

Amazon.com Says 'Embarrassing' Error, Not Hacker, Censored 57,310 Gay Books

Amazon.com Says 'Embarrassing' Error, Not Hacker, Censored 57,310 Gay Books

gawker.com

Conspiracy theories aplenty as Amazon delists gay books

Conspiracy theories aplenty as Amazon delists gay books

theregister.co.uk

The New York Times

The New York Times

nytimes.com

Amazon: 'Glitch' caused gay censorship error

Amazon: 'Glitch' caused gay censorship error

edition.cnn.com

Sales rank purged from Amazon

Sales rank purged from Amazon

independent.co.uk

The Amazon affair

The Amazon affair

sfgate.com

Amazon censoring books with Adult Content? Feels like the 1950s...

Amazon censoring books with Adult Content? Feels like the 1950s...

nouse.co.uk

Lessons to be learnt from 'Amazonfail' censorship row

Lessons to be learnt from 'Amazonfail' censorship row

irishtimes.com

Amazon Censors Gay Books

Amazon Censors Gay Books

huffingtonpost.com

Amazon hides erotic novels from appearing in its search results

Amazon hides erotic novels from appearing in its search results

dailymail.co.uk

'Gay writing' falls foul of Amazon sales ranking system
theguardian.com · 2008

Online retailer blames reduced profiles of Winterson, Hollinghurst, Vidal and others on glitch in new family-friendly charts

The internet retailer Amazon has found itself at the centre of a censorship row after it decided to remove a number…

Why We’re Not Buying Amazon’s Gay Book ‘Glitch’
queerty.com · 2009

It’s all a “glitch”, says Amazon. After a weekend of being bombarded by emails organized by Twitter (we told you it was an important gay political tool!) under the hashtag #amazonfail, the world’s largest online retailer of books is apologi…

Amazon Censorship - Who is affected?
meta-writer.livejournal.com · 2009

I've been asked for more information and am collecting the books/authors that are affected

  • Author/title

  • Level of explicitness/genre

  • GLTB content?

  • Censored on which amazon website

  • Link (maybe even a screencap)?

Collection: Books …

Amazon de-ranks so-called adult books, including National Book Award winner
latimesblogs.latimes.com · 2009

One of these books has been removed from Amazon's sales rankings because of "adult" content; the other has not.

"American Psycho" is Bret Easton Ellis' story of a sadistic murderer. "Unfriendly Fire" is a well-reviewed empirical analysis of…

Amazonfail: A Call to Boycott Amazon
edrants.com · 2009

It’s been called #amazonfail on Twitter, but it represents the greatest insult to consumers and the most severe commercial threat to free expression that we’re likely to see in some time. Amazon has decided to remove certain books that they…

Amazon removing "adult" (read gay) books from searches
whyweprotest.net · 2009

But OP, why are you bringing up freedom of expression issues in the freedom of expression section? It seems crazy to me, a fact I will illlustrate by using a large bold font and some irrelevant reference to 4chan.

Amazon Censors Its Rankings & Search Results to Protect Us Against GLBT Books
dearauthor.com · 2009

April 12, 2009 Amazon Censors Its Rankings & Search Results to Protect Us Against GLBT Books

JaneLetters of OpinionAmazon / censorship / LGBTQ

UPDATE No. 2: Amazon executive customer service email is: ecr@amazon.com and the customer service…

Author Zoe Margolis Replies to Amazon's alleged censorship
digitaljournal.com · 2009

Within 24 hours, authors of erotic books that found themselves de-ranked on Amazon.com speak out online and in mainstream media, with Zoe Margolis becoming the issue's spokesperson in the UK. Amazon accused of censoring books by removing ga…

Amazon.com de-ranks LGBT books, blames "glitch"
en.wikinews.org · 2009

Online bookseller Amazon.com blamed technical problems after lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transsexual (LGBT) themed works disappeared from searches on the site over the weekend. Several authors, however, are skeptical of Amazon's explanation…

Gay and Lesbian Books Lose Amazon Sales Rank For Some Reason
consumerist.com · 2009

UPDATE: Amazon Gay Book Removal Was Massive Prank, I Did It, Claims Troll

This holiday weekend, Amazon quietly made some changes to their sales ranks, removing selected gay and lesbian books from the site-wide rankings and from some search …

#AmazonFail : Why Did Amazon.com Delist Gay, Lesbian Books?
wiredpen.com · 2009

I can tell I’ve been out of PR for a while. My spidy sense did not kick in when I made my first #amazonfail tweet about 4 pm Pacific. About an hour later, I realized that #amazonfail had passed a tipping point. A Twitter search on #amazonfa…

Amazon 'Glitch' Delists Gay-Themed Books, Interwebs Cry Foul
wired.com · 2009

Hundreds of gay-and lesbian-themed books suddenly disappeared from Amazon.com's rankings over the weekend, causing an uproar among authors and activists who alleged it was a stealthy extension of the company's policy concerning adult conten…

Amazon.com says it has fixed error that removed gay, lesbian sales rankings
seattletimes.com · 2009

Amazon.com says wide variety of titles among 57,310 books removed from global rankings.

Amazon.com released a statement this afternoon seeking to explain why thousands of books — including many gay- and lesbian-themed titles — were removed …

Amazon criticized for deranking 'adult' books
cnet.com · 2009

Updated at 7:15 p.m. PDT with comment from Amazon.com.

Amazon.com recently delisted from its sales ranking system gay and lesbian book titles that it deemed "adult," raising the ire of some who characterize the move as online censorship.

Au…

Amazon.com Says 'Embarrassing' Error, Not Hacker, Censored 57,310 Gay Books
gawker.com · 2009

After gay-themed titles disappeared from Amazon.com's search results this weekend, everyone looked for someone to blame. One hacker took credit. Some faulted an Amazon engineer in France. One source thinks it was the Conficker worm.

The onl…

Conspiracy theories aplenty as Amazon delists gay books
theregister.co.uk · 2009

Gay and lesbian advocates took umbrage at Amazon.com on Monday after the online seller removed sales rankings for hundreds of books that contained homosexual themes.

The delisting, which affected books including James Baldwin's Giovanni's R…

The New York Times
nytimes.com · 2009

One hacker even tried to take credit for the incident, writing on his blog that he had taken advantage of bugs in Amazon’s Web site to trick people into flagging gay-themed books as inappropriate. Thousands of Twitter users included the tag…

Amazon: 'Glitch' caused gay censorship error
edition.cnn.com · 2009

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Online retailer Amazon has said a system error caused it to remove a number of gay and lesbian-themed books from its sales charts.

American novelist Gore Vidal has long been known as a liberal intellectual.

On Sunda…

Sales rank purged from Amazon
independent.co.uk · 2009

Amazon.com apologised yesterday for an "embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error" that led to the sales ranking being removed from tens of thousands of books.

The online retailer initially said on Sunday that a "glitch" had caused the p…

The Amazon affair
sfgate.com · 2009

The Amazon affair

Chronicle columnist, Jon Carroll , stands for a photograph inside the studio on Thursday Jan. 29, 2008 in San Francisco,Calif. Chronicle columnist, Jon Carroll , stands for a photograph inside the studio on Thursday Jan. 2…

Amazon censoring books with Adult Content? Feels like the 1950s...
nouse.co.uk · 2009

Amazon censoring books with "adult content"? Feels like the 1950s... Amazon's decision last weekend to make their website more "family friendly" can be described as nothing less than a complete balls-up.

Archive This article is from our arc…

Lessons to be learnt from 'Amazonfail' censorship row
irishtimes.com · 2009

Amazon’s apparent censorship of gay authors has been a marketing mess for the company, writes DANNY O'BRIEN

PUBLIC RELATIONS can be a tricky business on the internet: there aren’t many other media that can love your company on a Friday, tur…

Amazon Censors Gay Books
huffingtonpost.com · 2009

Gay literature has a long history of censorship. Since the 1881 censorship of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, gay and lesbian content has been classified as obscene. As recently as 2001, the ACLU was asked to intervene when the Anaheim, Cal…

Amazon hides erotic novels from appearing in its search results
dailymail.co.uk · 2018

Amazon is trying to make its vast website a bit less NSFW.

The internet giant made some sudden changes to the way that erotic novels surface in its search results.

As a result of the update, erotic novels have been filtered out of the resul…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

Similar Incidents

By textual similarity

Did our AI mess up? Flag the unrelated incidents

Sexist and Racist Google Adsense Advertisements

Sexist and Racist Google Adsense Advertisements

Jan 2013 · 27 reports
Google’s YouTube Kids App Presents Inappropriate Content

Google’s YouTube Kids App Presents Inappropriate Content

May 2015 · 14 reports
Wikipedia Vandalism Prevention Bot Loop

Wikipedia Vandalism Prevention Bot Loop

Feb 2017 · 6 reports
Previous IncidentNext Incident

Similar Incidents

By textual similarity

Did our AI mess up? Flag the unrelated incidents

Sexist and Racist Google Adsense Advertisements

Sexist and Racist Google Adsense Advertisements

Jan 2013 · 27 reports
Google’s YouTube Kids App Presents Inappropriate Content

Google’s YouTube Kids App Presents Inappropriate Content

May 2015 · 14 reports
Wikipedia Vandalism Prevention Bot Loop

Wikipedia Vandalism Prevention Bot Loop

Feb 2017 · 6 reports

Research

  • Defining an “AI Incident”
  • Defining an “AI Incident Response”
  • Database Roadmap
  • Related Work
  • Download Complete Database

Project and Community

  • About
  • Contact and Follow
  • Apps and Summaries
  • Editor’s Guide

Incidents

  • All Incidents in List Form
  • Flagged Incidents
  • Submission Queue
  • Classifications View
  • Taxonomies

2023 - AI Incident Database

  • Terms of use
  • Privacy Policy
  • Open twitterOpen githubOpen rssOpen facebookOpen linkedin
  • 30ebe76