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.

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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

CSET Taxonomy Classifications

Taxonomy Details

Full Description

Amazon's book store experienced a "cataloging error" in which 57,310 books lost their "sales ranking", a number used to help books show up quicker in the book suggestions algorithm. The books affected are reported to include between "dozens" and "hundreds" of books containing gay and lesbian themes, often labeling them as "adult material" or "pornographic" when similar books containing heterosexual characters remain at the top of the sales ranking.

Short 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.

Severity

Negligible

Harm Distribution Basis

Sexual orientation or gender identity

Harm Type

Harm to social or political systems

AI System Description

Amazon's bookstore sales ranking algorithm used to rank popular books and display higher-ranking books on earlier pages of Amazon marketplace

System Developer

Amazon

Sector of Deployment

Arts, entertainment and recreation

Relevant AI functions

Perception, Cognition

AI Techniques

content classification

AI Applications

sales ranking system

Location

Global

Named Entities

Amazon

Technology Purveyor

Amazon

Beginning Date

4-2009

Ending Date

4-2009

Near Miss

Unclear/unknown

Intent

Accident

Lives Lost

No

Amazon Censorship - Who is affected?

Amazon Censorship - Who is affected?

meta-writer.livejournal.com

Amazon Censors Gay Books

Amazon Censors Gay Books

huffingtonpost.com

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.

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