OMG--They are now censoring book reviews on Amazon.com!!
By Bevsue
@Bevsue (251)
United States
August 3, 2008 1:20am CST
Can you believe this? Nancy Pelosi has written a book that she has been promoting on all the talk shows this week. It is called KNOW YOUR POWER: A MESSAGE TO AMERICAN DAUGHTERS. Well, it is apparently a bunch of propaganda BS and people have said so in their reviews. Apparently there have been at least 250 negative reviews that have been deleted by Amazon. What flaming hypocrites. They make such a deal about showing reader reviews, but if you don't toe the party line you get axed.
Some people have complained that they have had their 2nd review also stricken. Apparently they are not allowing people to give their honest opinions there.
1 person likes this
4 responses
@shlooper (309)
• United States
3 Aug 08
Sometimes there is more to censorship than meets the eye. You are certainly correct that there is a good chance that it is hypocritical partisanship. However, there is also the chance that people did not actually read the book or were in other ways violating the terms and conditions of Amazon. It is difficult to write negative reviews without letting your feelings come in the way, and so many times negative reviews are fallacious pieces of crap that rant about things unrelated to the book. I understand why Amazon would delete these. I don't understand why Amazon would specifically CARE about this book and none of the other controversial ones, unless there is more information.
2 people like this
@Bevsue (251)
• United States
3 Aug 08
In the discussion section of Amazon they are trying to make it look like a bunch of people from the Drudge website have ganged up on Pelosi and are trashing her book enmasse--however a quick scan there shows the book isn't mentioned so I am not convinced of that.
I think people are just so disgusted with her appearances on TV promoting this book all week.
Her personal hypocracy is mind-boggling. Her book appears to be about women finding their power and standiong by their principles and yet all you have to do is look at the YouTube videos of her interactions with the Code Pink ladies to see how she values that.
@mimico (3617)
• Philippines
3 Aug 08
Well that's a shame. If the book's really bad, then readers ought to be made aware of this. Otherwise, Amazon will have to deal with unhappy customers who might not want to buy from them ever again. Perhaps Amazon should learn to screen merchandise first before putting it on shelves. That's the only way to prevent bad reviews. But I seriously hope they don't censor reviews anymore!
1 person likes this
@Bevsue (251)
• United States
3 Aug 08
Unless they have since been removed there were re-postings from various people stating that their negative reviews had been removed and that they previously saw over two hundred other negative reviews the day before. Also in the discussion section on Amazon there was mention that someone thought people who read Drudges site were posting negative reviews, etc.
@movicont (495)
• United States
3 Aug 08
Hmm, this has happened on Amazon before, so I guess it's not just a one-time incident. A while back, Amazon was censoring negative reviews on Scientology's Dianetics (see http://koavf.blogspot.com/2008/02/dianetics-diaries.html) and the news of it was reposted to many websites. However, in the Scientology case, the Church of Scientology was threatening to sue Amazon (and they have quite the track record of scaring multi-million dollar companies into submission), whereas in this case, I doubt Nancy Pelosi has been complaining to Amazon about the negative reviews. Which brings it down to: for what purpose would Amazon do this? (Hmmm...pot brewing...)
As a side note though, I checked out Pelosi's book and there seems to be a slew of negative reviews there. So I guess, while not acceptable, they're still reflecting the general viewpoint of her book. :-P
1 person likes this
@Bevsue (251)
• United States
3 Aug 08
Yes, they seem to be letting some of them be posted.
I think this is a really important thing and that we should watch it for this reason--and please everyone think about this v-e-r-y carefully.
I think the simple fact of the matter is that these book deals are one way in which hush ( or bribe) money is funneled to the politicians.
This is hard for the average person to research so we all have to pay special attention to everything we hear. Just think back about a-l-l the politicians who have published 'best sellers'. So many of them get stupendous, humongous advances--way out of proportion to the actual salability of the books. Like the Clintons, for instance. And, yet, stacks and stacks of these books end up on the clearance table and the dollar store. They are not selling in the numbers reported.
The reason I find the Pelosi thing so upsetting is because it really makes it look like the fix is in--they can't let a flood of negative reviews stand because people will start to comprehend that the book was a dud and that she couldn't possible have 'earned' however much from the sale of her book as she will claim.
