It's not that the act is fundamentally unthinkable. It's the preponderance of evidence against this being an intentional plan.
Amazon is a progressive company. They're headquartered in Seattle, a fairly progressive city. Their employees do not enjoy being treated like pariahs.
Amazon's best customers tend to be highly literate people who react to book-banning like they've been personally knifed. And Amazon is smart: The company knows that authors and publishers watch their Amazon sales rankings on an hourly basis (if not minute-by-minute) and will commence an immediate shitstorm if those rankings change in an unusual fashion, let alone vanish. Amazon would have an explanation ready. They would roll any change out carefully. They would have approached someone in the publishing industry to discuss such a drastic move before making it.
Because -- most importantly -- Amazon has a big financial incentive not to ban books. Amazon makes money by selling books. Every GLBT book they don't sell is money they don't make. If they were going to bow to pressure and take thousands of titles off the site the pressure would have to be really costly. Hence, presumably, quite visible. Where is it? And wouldn't the company have tried negotiation, first? Taken one or two shocking-looking titles off the list and then publicized that fact? Or tried the case in public, where librarians and publishers of (nearly) all stripes could help them push back against the pressure?
The very fact that the act blew up so quickly is evidence of how stupid it was. And it's impossible to believe that Amazon is really that stupid. (Though, as has been pointed out, it is easy to believe that an AI is that stupid. Be careful when letting AIs make your business decisions.)
Amazon is a progressive company. They're headquartered in Seattle, a fairly progressive city. Their employees do not enjoy being treated like pariahs.
Amazon's best customers tend to be highly literate people who react to book-banning like they've been personally knifed. And Amazon is smart: The company knows that authors and publishers watch their Amazon sales rankings on an hourly basis (if not minute-by-minute) and will commence an immediate shitstorm if those rankings change in an unusual fashion, let alone vanish. Amazon would have an explanation ready. They would roll any change out carefully. They would have approached someone in the publishing industry to discuss such a drastic move before making it.
Because -- most importantly -- Amazon has a big financial incentive not to ban books. Amazon makes money by selling books. Every GLBT book they don't sell is money they don't make. If they were going to bow to pressure and take thousands of titles off the site the pressure would have to be really costly. Hence, presumably, quite visible. Where is it? And wouldn't the company have tried negotiation, first? Taken one or two shocking-looking titles off the list and then publicized that fact? Or tried the case in public, where librarians and publishers of (nearly) all stripes could help them push back against the pressure?
The very fact that the act blew up so quickly is evidence of how stupid it was. And it's impossible to believe that Amazon is really that stupid. (Though, as has been pointed out, it is easy to believe that an AI is that stupid. Be careful when letting AIs make your business decisions.)