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 results for main categories and many of their 'best-selling' titles have been stripped.
The move has angered many erotica authors who say it could lead to a massive dent in revenue.
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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. Stock image
With their best-selling titles stripped, many of the authors say it will be harder for prospective buyers to find their content.
Now, many say they've been 'sent to the no-rank dungeon,' according to Motherboard.
When a book has been labeled a 'best-seller,' it might make the title more likely to appear at the top of search results, in advertisements or in the suggestion sections titled 'If You Like This Book, You Might Like...'
Amazon has yet to issue a statement on the changes to its search results.
However, one author said it received a notice from Amazon via email following inquiry.
It said: 'We’ve re-reviewed your book and confirmed that it contains erotic or sexually explicit content.'
Erotic novels have been filtered out of the results for main categories and many of their 'best-selling' titles have been stripped. The move has angered many erotica authors who say it could lead to a massive dent in revenue
'We have found that when books are placed in the correct category it increases visibility to customers who are seeking that content.'
'In addition, we are working on improvements to our store to further improve our search experience for customers.'
Many of the erotica authors are self-published and say they make significantly more money on Amazon than through brick-and-mortar stores or other online marketplaces.
According to AuthorEarnings, which compiles data for authors, about 80% of erotica downloads for Kindle are written by self-published authors.
In recent years, it's become a booming business for many.
Erotica author Jenny Trout told Motherboard that Amazon's latest change to its search results is 'censorship' and that there's 'no recourse for writers'.
'There's no way for an indie author to make a living without Amazon, so whatever nonsense they decide they're pulling this month is just one other thing we've got to put up with,' Trout explained.
'And that sucks, but they're a private business and they get to do what they want, so we can only really complain from a consumer standpoint,' she added.
Several erotica authors said Amazon didn't warn them ahead of time that their books had their best-selling title removed.
IS THIS THE FUTURE OF PORN? AI IS USED TO AUTOMATICALLY RECREATE NUDE PORTRAITS An artificially intelligent (AI) machine that creates surreal nude portraits has been built by a teenager in Virginia. AI whiz Robbie Barrat fed a neural network - an AI that functions like the human brain - thousands of naked portraits and then trained it to create its own racy artworks. In a Twitter post, he said the software often paints people as fleshy blobs spouting random tendrils and limbs, adding: 'I wonder if that's how machines see us'. An artificially intelligent (AI) machine that creates surreal nude portraits has been built by a teenager in Virginia While most of the women in the images appear lumpy and misshapen, some of the subjects closely resemble slender, standing figures. Mr Barrat, who recently graduated high school in West Virginia, said he is currently doing 'deep learning interning' for AI computing giant NVIDIA. He said the AI created images by interpreting a set of 'rules' about the shapes, sizes and colours of figures that it learned by looking at thousands of nude portraits. To train the algorithm - a Generative Adversarial Network (GAN) - he mostly used portraits from 'a few hundred years ago at least'.
Amazon has been known to make sweeping changes to its erotica section in the past.
Matthew Prince, CEO of cloud services provider CloudFlare, said in 2015 that his concerns around internet censorship were shaped by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' decision to ban dinosaur erotica from the platform.
'I worry about Jeff Bezos' bizarre obsession with dinosaur sex,' Prince told ZDNet.
'You can make a rational argument that if you're writing books fantasizing about having sex with animals or children, maybe that promotes a certain kind of behavior'
'But there's no risk of someone abusing a dinosaur," he said.
In 2013, Amazon began cracking down on erotica featuring monsters like Bigfoot and aliens, as well as dinosaurs.
Amazon has been known to make sweeping changes to how erotica is featured on the site. In 2013, the firm started cracking down on erotica featuring bigfoot, dinosaurs and aliens
Ann Mayburn, an erotica author, told Motherboard that her erotica novels featuring 'vibratin