Amazon: Reluctance for Affirmative Action?
If Twitter UK can be embarrassed into acting quickly, recently ridding itself (this week in fact) of cyber bullies and other assorted trolls by the British news media, backed by the government, plus have them arrested and publically exposed to the nation, then why hasn’t the head office of Amazon in the United States been forced to take the same action when it comes to attacks by trolls on Indie writers who are ordinary law abiding citizens like you and I?
Could it be that the reason it has happened here is simply because the UK victims of the Twitter troll attacks and cyber bullying are all prominent women? One of them is Professor Mary Beard who was threatened with a bomb. Another is Caroline Criado-Perez, who among other things was threatened with rape. She is the woman who campaigned successfully to get the face of the eighteenth century author Jane Austin on the UK ten pound note, something which should have happened decades ago.
Why is it that the US government is seemingly reluctant to take on Amazon over its deliberate protection of cyber bullies? What will it take to force them into action I wonder? May I suggest that if a senior US politician had been attacked for daring to write a novel and promote it on Amazon and its degenerate subsidiary Goodreads, the government would have closed ranks around the writer in question and moved heaven and earth to solve the situation?
The time has long since passed for any hope of Amazon doing the decent thing voluntarily. I would argue that the US government needs to publicly embarrass the CEO of Amazon into affirmative action. If it means that it prosecutes Amazon, demanding a massive fine running into the tens of billions if Amazon refuses to comply, so be it. What Obama and his government need to decide right now is who is the more powerful, them or Amazon. So what if Amazon and other major corporations donate to the various party political funds? In this instance being loyal to your financial backers has to take a back seat to the legal rights of the common man or woman to be protected from abusive attacks.
The only people who care about the on-going, mostly foul mouthed attacks by the trolls on Goodreads and Amazon are their victims – the Indie writers concerned. The problem is that not one of them can be classed as a prominent citizen. If they were then maybe Amazon would have been forced to close down Goodreads once and for all and to rid its own shadowy chat rooms of the trolls who inhabit them. Amazon claim that while they do not condone personal attacks, when it comes to removing an attack thinly disguised as a one star review, they are seemingly reluctant to do so. Who is in charge at Amazon? It certainly is not Amazon’s boss – Jeffrey P. Bezos…
