Amazon Troll Busting
Apr. 13th, 2009 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bryantThe original post which prompted this one is now inaccessible accessible again. C'est la vie.
Hopefully you weren't thinking of this as a news post, but just in case:
http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archives/166329.asp
"This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection," says the Amazon spokesperson. It's not as complete an explanation as I wish we could have, but it is not any sort of attempt to save face.
Oooh, new update!
There is a "report this content as inappropriate" box at the bottom of at least some Amazon pages. It doesn't go to the URL claimed, though. It goes to http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/features/fiona-feedback-email.html.
It is absolutely fascinating that after I screwed up and completely missed that link, nobody double-checked me. See philosophical pontificates lower down in this post.
(And nah, I still don't buy the troll -- the URL inconsistency is still wacky, and it's too easy to say "sure, it's not there because the functionality was removed." Especially since it wasn't. I do think he was making a point about trust on the Internet, and I do still think it's a good one.)
Oh, OK, one pair of links:
http://mikedaisey.com/
http://www.lilithsaintcrow.com/journal/2009/04/idosyncratic-code-amazonfail/
Mike Daisey used to work at Amazon, so it's not impossible that he has contacts inside the company who'd tell him the truth. I don't know of any motivation he has to make shit up, although he does make his living from people buying tickets to his work. He is a friend of a friend who I trust, but I don't know him personally. The story is plausible but also lacks detail.
The above paragraph is the sort of analysis to which one ought to subject any of these random assertions.
There's a guy claiming he abused Amazon's reporting system in order to get GLBT books removed from the sales rank listings. Since I have some pretension to technical ability, I figured I'd give his claims a test run. (Edit: post now protected and unreadable, unless you're a community member.)
Summation: nope, you didn't do that, you liar you. Nice meta-troll, though.
Details:
a) The code is buggy; I can't get it to run as written. In particular, he uses the -dump parameter to links. That causes links to dump a formatted version of the document, which does not contain any URLs at all. (Edit: yeah, he gave Valleywag an explanation for this which does make sense.)
I went ahead and got a non-formatted version of the page he's grabbing for the sake of completeness, and ran his grep and sed statements on it. You don't actually get a pretty listing of product IDs from that. You could get one if you wrote better regexps, but the ones he's providing just don't work.
So let's say he was just, I don't know, obfuscating because he's lazy. It is entirely possible to get a list of Amazon product IDs by methods similar to the ones he posted. Onward!
Thought that was clear, but I don't mind making it crystal-clear: I'm convinced that you can get a list of Amazon product IDs using his code.
b) He says that URLs of the form http://www.amazon.com/ri/product-listing/ generate a complaint. However, if you go to a URL with that format, you get a 404 page. It's possible that Amazon just pulled that functionality this morning, but there's no sign of that URL in their help system that I can see after a quick once-over.
Edit: he is saying that the functionality was just pulled. So I dunno. Google caches of Amazon book pages don't show the link he's claiming was there, but they wouldn't if that functionality is dependent on being logged in. Anyone have an old screenshot of an Amazon page showing that?
Conclusion: troll! Reserving the right to change my mind if we get some real proof, but see lengthy philosophy note that follows.
Edit: it's an interesting bit of trolling, actually. He's piggybacking on some of the same tendencies that led the original story to turn into a Cause with a capital C. If you're not a geek, the Internet is just this weird magical place where stuff /happens/ and anything's likely if it's expressed with authority.
His post is even better because there's nothing inherently implausible about the idea of hiring a bunch of third-world sweatshop people to screw up a user-generated tagging/complaint system. Amazon doesn't appear to have made that mistake, but you need to check before you can be sure.
To make it even better, Twitter was the main vector of communication about the Amazon stuff. Twitter is lousy for any communication which takes more than 140 characters; it strips logic leaving us only with reputation capital. The #amazonfail tag got a lot of reputation capital, initially from upset people and later from sheer volume...
But you can't tell from a Twitter post whether or not something's authentic. You gotta do your own research and thinking. Some people do; lots of people don't. No matter what Amazon did or didn't do, intentionally or not, there is absolutely not enough evidence right now to draw any conclusions other than "it's bad that this happened." Our troll used the same transmission technique, because who's gonna take the time to read his post and think about his claims?
(Addition to that: seriously. Why do you believe him? Why do you believe me, for that matter?)
Good times. At some point we're going to have to figure out how to overcome a thousand years of conditioning: for a very long time, saying something loudly required a great deal of effort, so at least you knew someone really believed what they were saying. These days, no effort at all, but we still have that kneejerk reaction. (This is not an Internet problem. I blame LaserWriters.) Man, doesn't it just seem antiquated that Speaker's Corner used to be a huge deal and a symbol of free speech?
The really interesting thing about the troll is that he's right even if he didn't do it. The vulnerability he describes exists anywhere you make automated decisions based on third-party input.
Hah. See what happens when I get links? I pontificate.
Hopefully you weren't thinking of this as a news post, but just in case:
http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archives/166329.asp
"This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection," says the Amazon spokesperson. It's not as complete an explanation as I wish we could have, but it is not any sort of attempt to save face.
Oooh, new update!
There is a "report this content as inappropriate" box at the bottom of at least some Amazon pages. It doesn't go to the URL claimed, though. It goes to http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/features/fiona-feedback-email.html.
It is absolutely fascinating that after I screwed up and completely missed that link, nobody double-checked me. See philosophical pontificates lower down in this post.
(And nah, I still don't buy the troll -- the URL inconsistency is still wacky, and it's too easy to say "sure, it's not there because the functionality was removed." Especially since it wasn't. I do think he was making a point about trust on the Internet, and I do still think it's a good one.)
Oh, OK, one pair of links:
http://mikedaisey.com/
http://www.lilithsaintcrow.com/journal/2009/04/idosyncratic-code-amazonfail/
Mike Daisey used to work at Amazon, so it's not impossible that he has contacts inside the company who'd tell him the truth. I don't know of any motivation he has to make shit up, although he does make his living from people buying tickets to his work. He is a friend of a friend who I trust, but I don't know him personally. The story is plausible but also lacks detail.
The above paragraph is the sort of analysis to which one ought to subject any of these random assertions.
There's a guy claiming he abused Amazon's reporting system in order to get GLBT books removed from the sales rank listings. Since I have some pretension to technical ability, I figured I'd give his claims a test run. (Edit: post now protected and unreadable, unless you're a community member.)
Summation: nope, you didn't do that, you liar you. Nice meta-troll, though.
Details:
I went ahead and got a non-formatted version of the page he's grabbing for the sake of completeness, and ran his grep and sed statements on it. You don't actually get a pretty listing of product IDs from that. You could get one if you wrote better regexps, but the ones he's providing just don't work.
So let's say he was just, I don't know, obfuscating because he's lazy. It is entirely possible to get a list of Amazon product IDs by methods similar to the ones he posted. Onward!
Thought that was clear, but I don't mind making it crystal-clear: I'm convinced that you can get a list of Amazon product IDs using his code.
b) He says that URLs of the form http://www.amazon.com/ri/product-listing/ generate a complaint. However, if you go to a URL with that format, you get a 404 page. It's possible that Amazon just pulled that functionality this morning, but there's no sign of that URL in their help system that I can see after a quick once-over.
Edit: he is saying that the functionality was just pulled. So I dunno. Google caches of Amazon book pages don't show the link he's claiming was there, but they wouldn't if that functionality is dependent on being logged in. Anyone have an old screenshot of an Amazon page showing that?
Conclusion: troll! Reserving the right to change my mind if we get some real proof, but see lengthy philosophy note that follows.
Edit: it's an interesting bit of trolling, actually. He's piggybacking on some of the same tendencies that led the original story to turn into a Cause with a capital C. If you're not a geek, the Internet is just this weird magical place where stuff /happens/ and anything's likely if it's expressed with authority.
His post is even better because there's nothing inherently implausible about the idea of hiring a bunch of third-world sweatshop people to screw up a user-generated tagging/complaint system. Amazon doesn't appear to have made that mistake, but you need to check before you can be sure.
To make it even better, Twitter was the main vector of communication about the Amazon stuff. Twitter is lousy for any communication which takes more than 140 characters; it strips logic leaving us only with reputation capital. The #amazonfail tag got a lot of reputation capital, initially from upset people and later from sheer volume...
But you can't tell from a Twitter post whether or not something's authentic. You gotta do your own research and thinking. Some people do; lots of people don't. No matter what Amazon did or didn't do, intentionally or not, there is absolutely not enough evidence right now to draw any conclusions other than "it's bad that this happened." Our troll used the same transmission technique, because who's gonna take the time to read his post and think about his claims?
(Addition to that: seriously. Why do you believe him? Why do you believe me, for that matter?)
Good times. At some point we're going to have to figure out how to overcome a thousand years of conditioning: for a very long time, saying something loudly required a great deal of effort, so at least you knew someone really believed what they were saying. These days, no effort at all, but we still have that kneejerk reaction. (This is not an Internet problem. I blame LaserWriters.) Man, doesn't it just seem antiquated that Speaker's Corner used to be a huge deal and a symbol of free speech?
The really interesting thing about the troll is that he's right even if he didn't do it. The vulnerability he describes exists anywhere you make automated decisions based on third-party input.
Hah. See what happens when I get links? I pontificate.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 05:00 pm (UTC)Especially if Amazon decides they need a good financial scapegoat, and lookee who just volunteered!
no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 06:02 pm (UTC)I mean, I'm not condoning his actions, I just don't think there's a lot you can do to a guy who doesn't take anything seriously. Besides ignoring him, that is.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 08:04 pm (UTC)I could link you to his published picture.
He doesn't care because he assumes nothing bad is going to ever happen to him, because he's so cool.
Mistake.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 08:39 pm (UTC)"Your honor, the only evidence the plaintiff has against my client is a post to an online community claiming responsibility, and some computer programming that doesn't work. Motion to dismiss."
no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 08:47 pm (UTC)I'm really seriously curious about the electronic trail here, if any. The iframe technique he describes is feasible; it's unclear to me how much of a trail it'd leave. If you just stick an iframe in a page with no screening around it, then Amazon would have logs of people randomly hitting the theoretical complaint page with referrer URLs, which means they'd know which sites had the hack inserted.
Not likely. I mean, even trolls like their jobs.
On the other hand there may be ways to hide the referrer URL when using iframes like that. I know of techniques to screen, but I would not bet my job that they'd work for all versions of all browsers.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 09:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 09:15 pm (UTC)Amazon gets to know either way. Any real complaint would have a referring URL that's also an Amazon page, because that's where the complaint links are served from.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 09:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-14 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 06:02 pm (UTC)But I still want to know what the hell is really responsible.
no subject
Date: 2009-04-13 08:06 pm (UTC)