virtualeconomics

Amazon dating

It occured to me yesterday that Amazon should offer a dating service.

They have all the information that it could possibly be useful to know about a prospective partner. How much do they spend on books? Which books do they buy? How close to publication date do they buy the important ones? Their reviews record would probably be handy too, just to make sure they understood what they were reading. Amazon has locational data for all its customers of course, so all they'd need to do is tweak some privacy settings, add a photo upload facility and let people search for cute potential partners near them who love the same books.

Never mind Twitter's strange trends: Wikileaks on course to become most "liked" source of investigative journalism in the world

Correction: EasyDNS has done nothing of the sort, and I stand corrected on this point. For more details see their blog or Techdirt. In fact they have been added to the new DNS delegation for Wikileaks.ch and are in this case on the side of the angels. 

Original post: Not only is Wikileaks a media entity: given its current trajectory, it is on track to very shortly become the most "liked" source of investigative journalism in the world.

At more than 913,000 "likes" at time of writing, and with its phenomenal rise* from nowhere to one of the most popular pages on the social graph, Wikileaks should now touch a million likes before the New York Times (hovering around 980k) does, putting it in global first place for serious investigative journalism "liked" by Facebook users voting with their clicks. Amongst comparably serious journalism practitioners the Guardian's main Facebook page sits at 54k likes, BBC News at 51k, HuffPo at 171k. Only crypto-serious news satire like the Onion, the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are ahead with likes in the 1.5m to 2m range (nothing to sneeze at, since satirical news audiences are the best informed in America); the biggest media channel of any sort by likes is Disney at 14.5m, assuming we exclude Facebook's own almost 30m.  

Yesterday it looked (a lot) like Twitter was censoring Wikileaks from trending - see this excellent research for details, though Twitter has a semi-plausible, Googley "our algorithim is really quite complicated" explanation for why it's all above board. (Google itself has refused to respond to enquiries from The Atlantic as to whether it would take down Wikileaks cables if they were published on Blogger.)

But even if Twitter doesn't want to show, or for complex and thoroughly counter-intuitive reasons uses an algorithm that doesn't show, the fastest-rising social media trend of the last fortnight, Facebook's likes show the trend unambiguously.

Amazon leaks, EveryDNS leaks

 About a fortnight ago I asked Amazon why they were stocking a book called The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure which appeared to endorse and encourage sex with children. Amazon issued the following response:

"Thank you for your inquiry. Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable.  Amazon does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts, however, we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions."

And yet, a matter of hours after defending their sale of the book with this clear statement of policy, Amazon pulled the title, apparently in response to a widespread outcry amongst customers and commentators, and it remains off the shelves.  Amazon has not replied to questions as to what happened there.

Even the long tail hopefully not quite as long as this

Update: I got the same form response from Amazon as everyone: " Amazon believes it is censorship not to sell certain books simply because we or others believe their message is objectionable.  Amazon does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts, however, we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions." OK, that's a pretty clear statement of policy and it's a general principal I can get behind. So, er, why's the book gone? Once more awaiting clarification from Amazon as to what they're up to with this one. 

 Original post:

Amazon is currently offering for sale a (Kindle) book entitled The Pedophile's Guide to Love and Pleasure (HT @chris_reed). Link, which I assume will vanish very soon since I am not alone in having emailed their press office for comment, is currently here and the product description reads

"This is my attempt to make pedophile situations safer for those juveniles that find themselves involved in them, by establishing certian (sic) rules for these adults to follow. I hope to achieve this by appealing to the better nature of pedosexuals, with hope that their doing so will result in less hatred and perhaps liter sentences should they ever be caught."

Ahem. Reviews are unsurprisingly unfavourable (though admittedly none of the reviewers seem to have read it); Twitter varies between assuming it's a joke and assuming it isn't. I confess that in my timidity before the sanction of both the police and the mob I have not bought it myself, so cannot tell you what lies therein. My first impression is that the author is not joking. Response from Amazon duly awaited.

(While I am really not in favour of the general pedophile witch-hunt that has beset this otherwise admirably tolerant island for more than a decade - and think it a grave misfortune rather than any sort of malice that leaves some people with a sexual desire for children, a misfortune for which I would like to see a great deal more compassion and rather less thoughtless and hysterical censure - I am certain in my view that people suffering from this misfortune have as their only acceptable option abstinence. Greater tolerance for those so afflicted is only possible if they accept that they cannot act on their desires, and to my mind this strange book can only retard that possibility.)