#amazonfail ¿El accidente o intencional?

Yo encuentro dos testimonios sobre los dos lados del agrumento sobre #amazonfail (si fue un error acidental or un accion intencional). Personalmente, yo todavía no comprendo la situación mejor de tener un lado pero los dos testimonios son muy buenos.

Por un lado es Clay Shirky quien escribió en su blog “The Failure of #amazonfail”. Pienso que él escribió un testimonio muy valido sobre la actuación en la atrocidad. Él dice, “When trying to explain one’s actions, hindsight is always 20/400. With that caveat, I will say that the emotional pleasure of using the #amazonfail hashtag was intoxicating. There is no civil rights struggle in the US that matters more to me than the extension of equal rights without regard for sexual orientation. Here was a chance to strike a public blow for that cause, and I didn’t even have to write a check or get up from my chair to do it!” En la percepción retrospectiva, él se dio cuenta de que sus acciones pueden ser preventivas y que es posible que el problema fuera solamente en la categorización (que hablamos en la clase). “I have been thinking about the internet as hard as I can for the better part of two decades, and for the latter half of that time, I’ve been thinking about the problems of categorization systems, and it never occurred to me that the possible explanation for systemic bias might be something having to do with a technological system instead of a human one, that a changed classification in the Amazon database could trigger the change in status of tens of thousands of books.” En fin, él dice que aunque el evento provocó inicialmente enorme atrocidad moral, la evidencia que no sucedió realmente no calmó esa atrocidad y juicio moral es más duro invertir que otros.

Pero, su amiga Mary Hodder, discute al contrario. Ella dice que, “Amazon is using algorithms, which rely on their classification system, with various statistics like “Sales Rank” to rank products in search results on the site. These algorithms and classifications have points of view. Their point of view, revealed this week, is that “positive references to sexual orientation == gay” is “adult” in nature. And that classifications will be used in the algorithms to sort out what is shown and what does or does not get to have “sales rank,” which then orders items in search results. And we all know search result order can lead to big sales, or invisibility.” Por este lado, estoy de acuerdo con ella en su solución del problema. Ella dice, “I would suggest that the company, because of its position in the market and power over both authors and publishers, as well as users and the intellectual marketplace of idea, ought to be doing a complete and public review of their classification and algorithm assumptions. Publishers and authors should push for it, and so should users.” Si en el fin, esto no fue un accidente, las personas deben tomar acción, y twitter ha demostrado un lugar bueno donde comenzar.