{"id":623,"date":"2009-04-15T09:22:25","date_gmt":"2009-04-15T16:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.talesfromthe.net\/jon\/?p=623"},"modified":"2009-04-15T09:22:25","modified_gmt":"2009-04-15T16:22:25","slug":"my-reply-to-clay-shirky-on-amazonfail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/2009\/04\/15\/my-reply-to-clay-shirky-on-amazonfail\/","title":{"rendered":"My reply to Clay Shirky on #amazonfail"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"amazon.fail<\/p>\n

Clay’s post The failure of #amazonfail<\/a> admits that over the weekend, he jumped to conclusions,\u00c2\u00a0 “believed things that weren’t true” about Amazon and was “intoxicated” by the hashtag.\u00c2\u00a0 He now thinks he was wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of the post is written in the first person plural, assuming everybody else reacted as he did.\u00c2\u00a0 He concludes that “we” should apologize to Amazon.\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s my reply, originally posted as a comment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Update: aemeliaclare<\/a> says it far better than me on Barely and Widely,<\/em> as does Mike Edwards<\/a>. Many of the commenters in Clay’s thread have good things to say as well.\u00c2\u00a0 On Twitter, by contrast, the backlash is out in force, with many positive responses to “the great Shirky”.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Update on April 16: <\/span>Janet D. Stemwedel’s Morality, outrage, and #amazonfail: a reply to Clay Shirky<\/a> on Adventures in Ethics and Science<\/em>, and Andrew Sempere’s Why Shirky Missed the Point<\/a> on A repository of ten thousand indignities and the harbinger of God knew what<\/em> are two more examples of “saying it better than me”.\u00c2\u00a0 Nadia Cooke’s On the resolution of #amazonfail<\/a> on The Ink Spectrum <\/em>and Landon Bryce’s It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Still On: The real failure of Amazonfail, Dubai, and Internet Outrage<\/a> on Bookkake<\/em> aren’t phrased as replies to Shirky, but make some very complementary points.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Meg Pickard’s Spreading like wildfire: Twitter, Amazon and the social media mob<\/a> focuses on what she sees as “ugly, prejudiced, underinformed, sneery, rude, kneejerk activity” on Twitter and sees it as “Destructive. Damaging. Virulent. Unapologetic. Unrelenting.”\u00c2\u00a0 Sigh.<\/p>\n

My replies to Clay and Meg below the fold.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If it had been a critique of those stupidities that circulated over the weekend, without the intentional mass de-listing, it would have kicked off a long, thoughtful conversation about metadata, system design, and public relations.<\/em><\/p>\n

Nonsense. These kinds of stupidities are normalized in society and I rarely see them discussed. How often are their posts like Mary\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s on TechCrunch<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Intention is what we were reacting to<\/em><\/p>\n

Speak for yourself. Many of the people I talked to are reacting to yet another example of silencing the voices of LGBTs, feminists, and people with disabilities (who you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even bother to mention in your post). Many are reacting to Amazon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dismissiveness in calling it a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153glitch\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Many are reacting to Amazon\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s ongoing lack of a real apology or executive involvement. Many are reacting to the revelation that Amazon has been manipulating their best-seller information. Many are reacting to the shocking fact that Amazon doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t appear to have any defenses against intentional manipulation (whether or not that happened in this case). Many are reacting to the impact of market dominance in ways that hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t quite struck home before. And so on.<\/p>\n

Maybe none of those things matter to you. And maybe *you* assumed intentionality. Don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t project your beliefs on others.<\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m proud to have been a small part of #amazonfail, and grateful to those who put far more time and energy in than I did. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m disappointed that somebody like you who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s championed social networks\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 ability to lower the bar for organizing doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t see it that way.<\/p>\n

jon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clay’s post The failure of #amazonfail admits that over the weekend, he jumped to conclusions,\u00c2\u00a0 “believed things that weren’t true” about Amazon and was “intoxicated” by the hashtag.\u00c2\u00a0 He now thinks he was wrong.\u00c2\u00a0 Most of the post is written in the first person plural, assuming everybody else reacted as he did.\u00c2\u00a0 He concludes that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[17,25,111,148,200,325,378],"class_list":["post-623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political","category-social-computing","tag-amazonfail","tag-activism","tag-disability","tag-feminism","tag-lgbt","tag-social-networks","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}