Apr. 13th, 2009 at 2:15 PM
2) The controversy has been picked up by over 300 newspapers and other sources. It's easy to follow as the news spread: yahoo news or google news.
3) In the category of how (rather than why), it seems they used the subject headings in the metadata. These are library and bookstore tags created by publishers and sometimes supplemented by Amazon. More here at Dear Author.
4) There's a troll that claims he caused it for lulz -- this is in the LJ comm brutal_honesty. He's lying, do not focus on him. bryant's debunking post.
Comments
Whether or not there was a glitch, there is no doubt Amazon put in place a very creepy mechanism for removing books from searches by stripping sales rank. It's possible they have been doing this since the summer of 2008 if not earlier.
http://www.teleread.org/2008/08/28/amaz
If metadata was the basis for de-ranking, then we can forget the theory that some outside group or individual troll was somehow flagging content to turn on the "de-rank" switch or whatever.