disasters

Hacker Possibly Responsible for Amazon.com Gay-Washing

Was a technical glitch to blame for the unranking of hundreds of gay-themed books on Amazon.com over the weekend — or was it A HACKER? A popular Internet troll says he’s responsible for the stunt, claiming he did it by exploiting a feature that allows users to unrank items by flagging them as “inappropriate” (apparently it only takes a few clicks to cause a product to lose its rank). And, hey, what do you know, Amazon has since removed the feature. We suppose this explanation makes a lot more sense than a retailer whose ostensible goal is selling books to literate customers ceding its parental controls to the lunatic fringe. Developing! [Live Journal via Gawker]

Hacker Possibly Responsible for Amazon.com Gay-Washing