Amazon back to its censorship

Apparently, Amazon has taken it upon themselves to censor negative reviews of the new book by wonderful Hilary Clinton. In just one day, hundreds of negative reviews were deleted form their website.

Yeah, Yeah, their business, they can censor what they want. However, I simply wanted to point out another company along with Google, that tends to lean a little farther left than one may expect.

source: www.zerohedge.com... (it has some pics too)

The best part, is this quote from their PR:

Speaking to Fortune, an Amazon spokesperson said: "In the case of a memoir, the subject of the book is the author and their views. It’s not our role to decide what a customer would view as helpful or unhelpful in making their decision. We do however have mechanisms in place to ensure that the voices of many do not drown out the voices of a few and we remove customer reviews that violate our community guidelines."

Based on the end of the quote... wouldn't one assume that deleting hundreds of negative reviews would, in fact, be drowning out voices?

What are your thoughts, ATS?

EDIT: I will concede that yes, there could've/would've been reviews from unverified amazon purchases of the book..... The problem is, those are not even posted. Basically, the reviews deleted were more than likely verified purchases that they just didn't like. They have to make money selling them, right? Can't sell them if everyone hates it.

a reply to: dothedew

Press, even bad press, sells.

a reply to: dothedew

I interpret that to mean that there was a concerted effort to downvote the book simply because of who the author was. Let's not kid ourselves. Amazon has access to their users' IP data. They can see if multiple people from the same IP are writing numerous reviews. They can also determine whether or not most of the negative reviews are coming from people that never actually purchased the book.

That's what I stated... They can verify the purchase before they even post the review. I tested this from my Amazon account, and I was unable to even submit a single sentence without my purchase being verified; meaning, those purchases would've been showing up as actual purchases.

This is not only the case with her book, as I've always had to have a verified purchase in order to post a review of any item. I even ordered a phone a while back, and I couldn't post a review then because the device hadn't been delivered yet.

originally posted by: Xcalibur254
a reply to: dothedew

I interpret that to mean that there was a concerted effort to downvote the book simply because of who the author was. Let's not kid ourselves. Amazon has access to their users' IP data. They can see if multiple people from the same IP are writing numerous reviews. They can also determine whether or not most of the negative reviews are coming from people that never actually purchased the book.

Let's be honest, you don't have to actually read the book to know it's 100% complete and utter BS.

Don't forget, we now know that there are paid shills on websites. Plus reviews of unverified purchase may have influence. Personally, I could care less about the book. What happened, well you stupidly "let your guard down" before the election was over. You should have been in Michigan. So now we have a moron, who is a twitter addict as acting POTUS.

In all honesty though, I do think that when she got pneumonia it kicked her butt. I really honestly do. That was the worst time for her to have gotten sick, and that is when she was not having the rallies she should have. I also think Comey reopening her email case made some of those still on the fence, jump ship.

a reply to: dothedew

Reading through their guidelines, it appears that you don't need to have made a verified purchase to leave a review for most items. In fact:

Customers can submit 5 non-Amazon Verified Purchase reviews each week. Non-Amazon Verified Purchase review counts are calculated each week from Sunday at 12:00am GMT through Saturday 11:59pm GMT. This policy does not apply to Vine reviews or reviews on digital and physical books, music, and video.

However, I will agree that as of right now Clinton's book is being limited to Amazon Verified Purchase reviews. Probably because they were getting so many negative non-Amazon Verified Purchase reviews that it sent up a red flag.

How were those reviews worded? That would be my first question.

Were they actual reviews of the book, or opinions about her? Not necessarily the same thing. I dislike her intensely, so any review of her book by me, not that I'll likely read it, would undoubtedly be colored by the opinion.

originally posted by: jjkenobi

originally posted by: Xcalibur254
a reply to: dothedew

I interpret that to mean that there was a concerted effort to downvote the book simply because of who the author was. Let's not kid ourselves. Amazon has access to their users' IP data. They can see if multiple people from the same IP are writing numerous reviews. They can also determine whether or not most of the negative reviews are coming from people that never actually purchased the book.

Let's be honest, you don't have to actually read the book to know it's 100% complete and utter BS.

You would have to read it to know for sure. But judging by your comment you have pre-judged based on pre-conceived bias.

originally posted by: seagull
How were those reviews worded? That would be my first question.

Were they actual reviews of the book, or opinions about her? Not necessarily the same thing. I dislike her intensely, so any review of her book by me, not that I'll likely read it, would undoubtedly be colored by the opinion.

actual news story on it here rather than the lies and fake news the opening poster hinges their life upon.

This was done here yesterday.

a reply to: growler

Whoa there, killer... Now that I know what side of the political spectrum you fall under, I can giggle under my breath.

On a side note, thanks for adding another source, as anything unbiased has been pretty hard to come by, considering I only found out about this (as have most other news outlets) this morning/late last night, and I bookmarked the site for a later thread.

It still seems a little wishy washy that nearly every review is either 5 stars or nothing.. I also only base the ratings off of what I've encountered when I do my Amazon shopping - If I haven't bought it and received it, I couldn't rate it.

If this is all standard practice and I was simply an odd out example, then I stand corrected.

a reply to: dothedew

are sure it's that black and white, are you sure the comments being deleted are simply "negative" reviews...
because there are actually negative reviews on there.

are you sure you're not just another victim of selective specific reporting by the sites where you get your news from..?
are you sure?

are you sure there isn't more for you to 'concede' to...

originally posted by: jjkenobi

Let's be honest, you don't have to actually read the book to know it's 100% complete and utter BS.

You are claiming an opinion admittedly based on complete ignorance under the guise of honesty? I do hope you're joking.

originally posted by: Xcalibur254
a reply to: dothedew

Reading through their guidelines, it appears that you don't need to have made a verified purchase to leave a review for most items. In fact:

Customers can submit 5 non-Amazon Verified Purchase reviews each week. Non-Amazon Verified Purchase review counts are calculated each week from Sunday at 12:00am GMT through Saturday 11:59pm GMT. This policy does not apply to Vine reviews or reviews on digital and physical books, music, and video.

However, I will agree that as of right now Clinton's book is being limited to Amazon Verified Purchase reviews. Probably because they were getting so many negative non-Amazon Verified Purchase reviews that it sent up a red flag.

Nice! It appears you may have figured it out. Seems like a reasonable response on Amazon's part.

a reply to: odzeandennz

To be honest I feel like most of the reviews on there are fake. The book is 512 pages and came out two days ago. I know there are speed readers out there but 612 of them bought it, read it, and then decided to post a review on Amazon? Not only that but they decided to leave only a 1- or 5-star review?

The 2% of you that left a 4-star review? I kind of trust you.

originally posted by: growler

originally posted by: seagull
How were those reviews worded? That would be my first question.

Were they actual reviews of the book, or opinions about her? Not necessarily the same thing. I dislike her intensely, so any review of her book by me, not that I'll likely read it, would undoubtedly be colored by the opinion.

actual news story on it here rather than the lies and fake news the opening poster hinges their life upon.

From your link;

What Happened, in which Clinton gives her account of the 2016 presidential campaign, was published on Tuesday. By Wednesday morning, there were more than 1,500 reviews of the memoir on Amazon.com, the majority either glowing or scathing.

The book’s publisher at Simon & Schuster, Jonathan Karp, told the Associated Press: “It seems highly unlikely that approximately 1,500 people read Hillary Clinton’s book overnight and came to the stark conclusion that it is either brilliant or awful.”

Quartz, which tracked the reviews in detail, said that of the 1,500-odd original reviews, “only 338 were from users with verified purchases of the book”.

Thank you for that.

I posted a critical one-star review of a book about six weeks ago (not the Clinton book). I let it percolate then out of curiosity went back to see if there were any replies.

What I found was when you click "see reviews" for that book title, it only showed the good reviews, initially. Mine did not appear at all, scrolling through. There was a statement of some sort like "only showing verified purchaser reviews (FWIW, I bought the book at Barnes, so technically while I did own the book, I wasn't a customer of Amazon for *that* particular book).

In order to find my review, one would have to click either on a "see all reviews" or, get this , on the one-star bar graph, which then shows "Sorry, no reviews match your current selections" and *then* scroll upwards to see "top critical review" which happened to be mine.

So to add to the OP, there is a **lot** of censoring of reviews going on at amazon. Not outright deletions in my case, but if there were deletions how would one know?

a reply to: Xcalibur254

I can do that with a Stephen King book. This one I wouldn't know what to do. Toilet paper maybe if it doesn't leave a rash.

a reply to: dothedew

Good reviews, bad reviews.

If you weren't going to buy the book before, likely you're not going to buy it after.

Die-hard Hillary fans will buy it regardless. I can guarantee that some will probably buy 3 or more just to boost sales.

Of course it'll be a "best seller" but most will just sit in warehouses after the Clinton Foundation buys them up.


I'm waiting for the "scratch n sniff" version to come out.

(I'll see myself out)