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Some people really, truly need more useful hobbies. Maybe he could take up cooking?
1 replies
Some people really, truly need more useful hobbies. Maybe he could take up cooking?
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1) DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS. Whether this is true or not, posting his face on your frontpage, along with links, gives him exactly what he wants. Epic fucking fail, Consumerist. You lose. The only way to fight idiots like this is to ignore them.
2) It's probably not true. Weev is just like every petty terrorist warlord who comes out and claims responsibility for any normal plane crash or railway accident.
3) If this started in February as is being reported, and Amazon was aware of what was happening then, the facts do not support the hacker story.
This is shoddy reporting of the worst kind. At least find a better source than the community of hackers who are themselves claiming credit. On something this big, you should at least double source your story for God's sake.
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@VittoriaCorvinus: I'd be fine if Ben tweaked this article so that the person wasn't named and if a different picture (kittehs?!!!) was used. I think it'd be ethical and follow the news-worthiness of the story. The provided links would be available for those curious people, while keeping Consumerist's hands clean of muck.
Funny thing is, if the loser posted a lying press release that had no basis in reality, he STILL gets his toadlike mug blasted across the interwebs, which is his purpose.
I think that is the more likely reality. Amazon's initial statement telling an affected author makes me think this one's all Amazon.
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@Trai_Dep: Amazon's \"initial statement\" was nothing more than a copy and paste from the \"Big Book o' Amazon Responses\" that they keep on the shelf over there in India. In my experience, you'll NEVER get a useful response to an email inquiry sent to Amazon.
The affected author's book got flagged as \"Adult\", which caused the ranking to be dropped, which is what the reply addressed.
As much as I've read on his antics, with full knowledge that I am not an internet elite, I can completely understand why he wants to take away the internet from everybody who thinks Twitter is a soapbox for their idiocy or has to call tech support to find the power switch on the computer.
@Erik David Even: I hate twitter. Damn newsfeed is annoying enough, I cant imagine having an endless facebook newsfeed. Or anyone even wanting to post to it.
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@Harley Balabanian:
They are using the same pic as consumerist, except its a bit larger. Look behind him, he has an anonymous mask on his dresser. /b/ tard strikes again?
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@Berz: Your logic is perfect. This means Hugo Weaving is the largest 4chan'er of them all. Not everyone who actually liked \"V For Vendetta\" and possesses a Guy Fawkes mask enters that festering pit.
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@Berz: That's a mighty fine basement he's living in. He may even have a window, from the looks of it.
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If this guy represents the next generation, we are so fucked. First came Gen X, then Gen Y , now here's Gen MOAR EPIC FAIL...
Generation X is responsible for 95% of the internet; pretty much everything beyond TBL.@FuryOfFirestorm:
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Does anyone believe he's telling the truth? Because I don't.
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@Rectilinear Propagation: I have some familiarity with the things he has done, and he has pulled off much, much bigger things before. I don't doubt it.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-483565-100x100.png\")
@Rectilinear Propagation: I'm certainly skeptical. Gawker is considering the absence of the \"flag item as inappropriate\" capacity to be a confirmation of his story, but I'm wondering if that capability was ever there in the first place.
Ha, I really hope he did it. That'd be a nice slap in the face to all the posters here with their pitchforks held high against amazon.
I thought the blogger who found this got a reply from amazon admitting to doing it. So confused...
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Gays are apparently easy to troll. If this guy was responsible, it's pretty impressive how much shrieking, hair-pulling outrage he kicked up with a minimal amount of effort. Then again, these people are among the perpetually agrieved. If it wasn't this, they would have found something else to whine about.
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@henwy: Yeah, cause it's not like gays have any legitimate reason to get touchy about homophobia or anything. It's not like they're constantly harassed and threatened by scared bigots all the time, either.
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@korybing: And anyone that doesn't agree with your point of view is automatically a bigot I suppose?
@korybing: And it's wryly amusing that the bigots -- notorious for being the most mob-crazed no-nothings on the web ranting over every false rumor, from Terry Schiavo to Barry's alleged Muslim-ness, to, well, anything involving Barney Frank -- are calling others \"sensitive\" or misinformed.
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@henwy: Any group that is persecuted in society (or merely just FEELS persecuted) are incredibly easy to troll.
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He could be telling the truth, or he's seeking some free fanfare but either way, he does bring to the forefront a common issue with Trust-based reporting models sites like Amazon, Craigslist, and eBay use. These companies setup a system of trust with their users for flagging inappropriate material, this system is easily exploited when those users haven't earn said trust.
I know I'm not the only person that has posted a completely legitimate post on Craigslist only to have it taken down due to people flagging it. Also, eBay has taken down legitimate auctions while spammy ones thrive. Using these trust-based system that's open to anyone causes the trustworthy to be squished out by the nefarious. Just like this amazon thing. This exploit also holds well with this guys theory of testing it out in February, as people have said they've seen.
These flag/trust-based systems always need a human filter, which costs money, which is why these systems were put into place in the first place.
At any rate, I truly believe this was a glitch/\"hack\" as Amazon wouldn't be so stupid to intentionally do this.
@traeblain: I like how this post, probably the best post on the page, has no responses. NEEDS MORE MINDLESS INTERNET OUTRAGE, right? I guess that speaks for Consumerist readers.
First thing first - Riiiight.
Second - I sort-of wish he had bright yellow fluffy hair in this picture.
Considering Amazon's initial response to a gay author was that Amazon was \"cleaning up\" its rating system, I think it's far more likely that Toad-face is simply making crap up in a press release to get in on this much-hyped story.
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@Trai_Dep:
Yep I agree with you, and what's worse is, even if it turns out to be not true on the part of Amazon - they'll still be tainted to me and I will not shop there.
@Trai_Dep: 'Toad-face' -- You know, I was trying to think of what that picture brought to mind and I think you've hit the nail on the head.
I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO BELIEVE ANYMORE
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I find it difficult to believe anyone who would include the following in his \"confession\":
\"This started a while back on Craigslist, when I was trying to score chicks to do heroin with.\"
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i'm not buying it... there are other authors stating that this problem has gone on for longer, on a smaller scale. while that might look like a hacker testing the waters, apparently the issue was reported to amazon by authors in august 2008 and february of this year.
if it was a hacker testing the system in those cases, i'd expect amazon to have looked into it, seen the breach and corrected the flaw.
if this is the case and amazon ignored the fact that someone was manipulating their system in a way detrimental to their sales and sellers... i'm still not going to be confident in them after that.
whether it was intentional, glitch or hack - i'm waiting for the public apology to everyone whose work was affected.
You're missing the point.
The suggestion here is that Amazon's de-ranking was based on user 'votes'. So, yeah, it's been going on since 2008, because some authors had their books voted 'inappropriate' by users, and sure they didn't like it. But most people weren't paying attention. Then, hypothetically, this guy or someone else, caused many many books to get voted inappropriate, including some that 'reasonable people' wouldn't think were inappropriate or 'adult'.
It's completely plausible.
But who gets to decide what's 'adult'? Apparently anyone on Amazon that feels like it.
Unless Amazon changes the system, now that we know this, Amazon's in for some fun. You don't even need a cross-site attack. Any book you don't like, just get all your friends to quite legitimately vote it 'inappropriate'.
Which is probably exactly what happened to those authors who 'brought it to Amazon's attention' a year ago. Except when it was just a couple freaky authors, nobody cared.
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@catastrophegirl: Nobody fixes the system until the flaw reaches critical mass.
Occasional complaints about books marked \"adult\" here and there? Easy to ignore. After all, any one dissatisfied author doesn't have that much power. Amazon could have believed that the ratio of abuse:benefit was low enough to continue business as usual.
But the sudden delisting of 60,000 books, a good portion of which happen to be gay-and-lesbian-themed? Well, finally you and the whole world knows that your system is broken. Congratulations, Amazon, you now have a veritable PR clusterfuck on your hands.
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so not buying it.
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Ironically the guy looks gay himself. Maybe he's covering up for something deeper....?
@The Marionette: Except gays look, y'know, kinda hawter compared to their vagina-impaired brethren.
Maybe if he was in a gimp suit, but only if he wore a hood before, during and for quite a long time after.
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@Trai_Dep: I <3 you from one end of this website to the other. If my day hadn't been made by the earlier disemvowelling of a Gay-Bashing Poster Who Shall Remain Unnamed, I would tell you this made my day. You can make tomorrow, though.
Also: I'm still willing to believe that this is POSSIBLE, even if the problems did start months ago. I think it's pretty obvious that the majority of books got hit this past weekend, the previous ones could have been flagged by random jerks. Who knows. This guy looks like a toad.
If true, what a d-bag.
Also if true, he should be sued for loss of income by the authors of titles affected by the action. I'm sure there is some formula relating search results with sales that could be applied.
It would certainly make a dent in his hot pockets and bawls allowance he gets from his mom.
@TCinIowa: Thank you for your guest starring role as internet lawyer. It was an incredible contribution.
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Whether he did it, or not, the damage is done. There are perpetual victims out there that will always believe the worst about corporate America regardless of any evidence to the contrary.
@HiPwr: I know corporations are terrible. Providing billions of dollars in taxes and employing millions of people the way they do. Those evil bastards.
Corporations are about making money. That doesn't always mean that what they do is in the \"best interest\" of the public, but that's the way it is. It's our perogative to reward them with our dollars when we like what they do and punish them when we don't by spending it on their competitors that are more \"civic-minded\".
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-219008-100x100.png\")
Just like there are perpetual idiots who believe corporations have our best interest at heart over making money regardless of any evidence to the contrary.
I wish to God there was a way to break people's fingers through the Internet.
Not to be judgmental...but by looking at the picture, this doesn't come as a huge surprise. I'd explain further by I'd like to retain my commenting rights!
He may be good with hacking into major corporations, but can he make my slow computer run faster?
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it's ok weev, you can come out of the closet.
Neither of those examples are valid to what he did.
He didn't break into the system.
He didn't change any code.
He used existing code to do something the way Amazon designed it, with results that Amazon wasn't expecting.
They might try to claim that because he 'automated' the flagging that it consitutes a \"denial of service\" attack, but that would really be stretching that definition.
I think even the authors would have a hard time proving damage, unless the sales data showed a marked difference from one day to the next. Which I would doubt since most people wouldn't buy a book based on the sales rank.
Ultimately I think Amazon will have to rethink some of it's systems.
And that is all presuming what this guy says is true.
@starrion: That's called an Exploit. It's, sadly, akin to a \"Hack\" in the developer world, which would be bad if this story were true.
What we have is a conservative step-in at the Amazon Shops, a public outrage, and Amazon covering its tracks as hard as possible. This \"Weev\" character is likely either A: A hire-on, or B: a complete falsehood. Really. Read the post. While Poe's Law applies, I doubt very seriously that it applies here. Amazon is manufacturing something completely off the wall to try and cover the tracks of their own staff, in a way, trying to make the removal \"Hush-hush\", and finding out that hey, the internet pays attention.
If this were true, there would already have been arrests made, and there would be pending charges against this person by Amazon under the Computer Fraud and Abuse act of 1986, as well as under more recent statutes. Which there don't seem to be.
Amazon, you fail again, and you, again, lose my funding.
@undefined: Basically, a troll's argument is that none of these companies ever have a system in place to stop them and deserve it. They see the vulnerability and attack it, justifying their actions as revealing a problem publicly.
Think of this- Your friend smells.
One person could pull him aside and suggest that he use deodorant.
One person could bring him to a bar where women will heckle him openly and publicly humiliate him.
Both get the job done, but a troll's justice is made partly for an audience and entertainment.
This was very obvious. I think it's sad so many people jumped on the amazon hates gays bandwagon.
@nerdtalker: If you read the LJ post, he's taking responsibility because he's saying that he hates San Francisco Craiglist gays because they'd flag his masked posts asking for girls to shoot heroin with him while allowing euphemisms for gay sex and meth use were never touched.
Oh, that and internet outrage.
@Papa Midnight: I guess if you take \"disliking people because they're dumb and easy to outrage\" as a negative, your post comes off as speaking poorly on them.
To someone like me, I laugh because I think it's hilarious and agree with them more than I disagree with them.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-90329-100x100.png\")
Instead of coming to Amazon and representing a weakness in their system, this person went to go and exploit it instead and get attention about it.
This person even mentioned that it was another site and not this one that made him\"upset\" and chose to attack a non-affiliated site. Amazon does have rights for a civil suit, as it is clear that it affected their reputation and their sales.
\"even the idea's plausibility doesn't speak well for Amazon.\"
Yeah, geez. Why would a company trust it's consumer base? Why did they try to be friendly to their user base? They should lock stuff like that down and treat their customers like crap, like all the other companies out there.
Even if Amazon doesn't sue, could the authors and publishers of the unranked books file a civil suit, on the grounds of lost revenue? Would be a hard thing to prove and quantify but worth it if only to make this brat's life a legal hell for a couple of years.
This is what I had suspected. People said that this was an evil plot by Amazon, but I suspected that this was similar to the Mikeyy/StalkDaily incident on Twitter recently. Amazon would obviously never intentionally make a change like that, so it was either an accidental system bug or a malicious attack.
This guy ain't that smart.
\"Searching for a heroine to do the paronym of this sentence's lexical subject\"
That's not even proper grammar. The subject of any sentence using the Declarative tense (\"I am...\") is \"I\" - \"heroine\" is the object of that sentence, not the subject.
![\"user-pic\"](\"http://consumerist.com/assets_c/userpics/userpic-490551-100x100.png\")
Amazon and White Hat Hackers (which are ethical Hackers) should bring back public hangings for this Sack or Poop.
At least he does heroin, so if Amazon doesn't get him, at least he'll end himself.
He makes me facepalm.
IF this guy actually did it, he is either a bigot or a closet case. Pathetic either way.
Whether or not Weev had anything to do with it (I'm leaning towards no, but it's possible), the boy is still well and truly a douche.
except that it doesn't explain why Amazon execs had talking points in place the day before everything hit...or why employees are now stepping forward and saying that they were told to classify 58,000 titles as adult.
I don't buy it. I think he is a troll, trying to get some bizarre attention for something he didn't do.
The real troll is weev's explanation for this. He isn't behind it, but created a plausible way to take credit for it. It's part of what he does.
![\"user-pic\"](\"/mt-static/support/assets_c/userpics/userpic-910740-100x100.png\")
...Why the hell would anyone with half a brain believe Weev of all people? He's a drug addict cultist troll who doesn't even believe half the shit that comes out of his own mouth.
Jesus, even Jason Fortuny has more credibility than him and that's saying something.
LOL @ all of you believing Weev.
I used the \"mark as inappropriate\" button on Amazon last week. (search for anal sex in the movies section--I thought a couple of those that display hardcore porn pictures were highly inappropriate). It's no longer there. I think he's telling the truth.
Let us say that it was not Weev, but Moose and Sqvirrel who did this thing. Everyone who has commented above, claiming that anyone who believes Weev is eating troll bait, is a luz3r of the first order. Hate is not the opposite of love; indifference is. Flaming is not the opposite of trolling; indifference is. If you want Weev and his little script-kiddie playmates to fade into the background, ignore him. Weev. Weev. Weev. I hate Weev. Weev is idiot. Fearless Leader will crush Weev. Mr. Big love Weev. We must catch Moose and Sqvirrel.
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Although the story actually sounds plausible at first, the fact that it's coming from the lips of a compulsive liar and career douchebag reduces the believability to zero.
Bravo. +420 Brazillion internets to you, good sir!
I just got an apology e-mail from Amazon, which I am quite impressed by. Not only do they admit the problem, but they come clean as to how bad it was. Evidently, this is a company that freely admits to its mistakes and will continue to get my business. Here's what they said:
\"Hello,
This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.
It has been misreported that the issue was limited to Gay & Lesbian themed titles - in fact, it impacted 57,310 books in a number of broad categories such as Health, Mind & Body, Reproductive & Sexual Medicine, and Erotica.
This problem impacted books not just in the United States but globally. It affected not just sales rank but also had the effect of removing the books from Amazon's main product search.
Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.\"
10 out of 10, Amazon. Nice going.
Weev has got to be the biggest dipwad on the planet...and a complete sociopath. I've read about some of the shit he's pulled in the past. He takes pride in ruining people's lives for no purpose other than to make himself laugh at the things he does to random victims.
Someone needs to find Weev and give him a taste of his own medicine.
Wow, that troll just brought a bad name to one of the few semi-honest .com companies out there.
\"How to cause moral outrage from the entire Internet in ten lines of code\"? More like \"how to make a bunch of Twitterers blow things out of proportion by pretending to stick up for their gay buddies and cause massive anti-corporate rebellion in the Internets\".
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Stay classy! /sarcasm
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I guess that would explain it.
But why claim responsibility? You're just asking for problems at that point.
@nerdtalker: What this guy did is about as illegal as Steven Colbert's campaign to name the ISS Node 3 'Colbert'. Yes, he gamed the system. Yes, it made the people running the system look stupid. No, he didn't break any laws.
@nerdtalker: It's Weevlos. I'm not surprised by him anymore.
@nerdtalker: This is what the trolling \"community\" is all about: doing repugnant things to get attention. It would be much more surprising if someone did this and didn't take credit.
@nerdtalker: from a legal, financial standpoint, he's in trouble. From a street cred stand point, he has a little more than he did before.
@nerdtalker: If what he did was just exploit a system, then he really didn't break any rules. The most he could get nailed with is a civil claim by the authors that what he did affected their sales.