A hacker now claims he was behind the Amazon.com "glitch" that caused hundreds of gay- and lesbian-themed books to lose their sales ranks over the weekend. The hacker, who identifies himself only as "Weev," posted a confession of sorts within a LiveJournal discussion group Monday morning.
Amazon's 'Adult' Title Issue
The Amazon incident resulted in books ranging from Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain to James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room being labeled as "adult" titles and thereby having their sales ranks removed. Amazon's sales ranks indicate how well a product is selling on the site. A stronger score can lead to better placement within in-site searches and best-seller lists.
The issue was first observed by author Mark R. Probst, who discovered that his own work -- a gay romance novel called The Filly -- was among the items affected. A Twitter campaign soon followed under the heading "#amazonfail," and petitions and even calls for a boycott arrived shortly thereafter.
A Hacker's Story
"Weev" says he was able to spark the sales rank strippings by exploiting an Amazon.com feature for reporting inappropriate content. A small number of reports on any given title would cause it to lose its ranking, he says -- so he created a script to find all gay- and lesbian-themed books, then worked with owners of some (unnamed) popular Web sites to send in scores of complaints.
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