From PJ Media:
Earlier this month, former Trump official Kash Patel published The Plot Against the King, a kids’ book taking the real-life Russiagate plot to sabotage Trump’s campaign and presidency and turning it into a family-friendly tale set in medieval times. The book was published by Beacon of Freedom Publishing House, an imprint of Brave Books.
As of this writing, the book is in the top 100 of all books on Amazon and had previously been in the top ten; however, the author says that Amazon is now trying to sabotage his book.
Amazon has restricted the book to verified purchase reviews only. If you attempt to write a review without having purchased the book first, Amazon won’t let you, giving you the disclaimer: “Amazon has noticed unusual reviewing activity on this product. Due to this activity, we have limited this product to verified purchase reviews.”
However, despite this restriction, the author says that Amazon is throttling five-star ratings from verified purchase reviewers by not allowing them to be posted.
“I have received numerous complaints from supporters that after purchasing my book, The Plot Against the King on Amazon, they were not able to leave a review,” Patel says in a statement obtained by PJ Media. “Like I have experienced numerous times in the past, with the documentary The Plot Against the President, Amazon is actively throttling my book.”
In addition to five-star reviews being throttled, Patel notes that there are about 70 unverified one-star reviews from customers who most certainly did not read the book, and haven’t been taken down despite the limitation placed on the book’s reviews. Patel wonders why Amazon allows these bogus one-star reviews to remain, “but doesn’t allow real verified customers that have read the book to review it.”
Link to the rest at PJ Media and thanks to K. for the tip.
Per GeekWire, as of February this year, Amazon had over one million employees. PG suggests that any organization with that many employees is bound to be paying wages to multiple crazy people and fools.
Ideally, an employer identifies a crazy person/fool pretty quickly and takes appropriate action, but, as a wiser person than PG once said, “The problem with fools is that they can be so ingenious.” Crazy people can pass as non-crazy people for a period of time.
In PG’s experience, sometimes large organizations have to fire a crazy boss before they recognize that most of the people that boss hired are also crazy.
So, a crazy person decided to manipulate the hidden levers of Amazon to sabotage a book he/she/they/it didn’t like. PG suggests that spreading the word about this unfair practice/treatment of the book was likely the best way of remedying the problem.
Evidently, somebody else at Amazon doesn’t share the view of whoever glitched the book in the first place. PG just checked and The Plot Against the King is ranked #1 in Children’s Action and Adventure Books on the Zon.
PG would have put up a Look Inside widget for the book, but evidently, someone at Beacon of Freedom Publishing House, an imprint of Brave Books, didn’t think anyone reads ebooks and the paperback link to look inside doesn’t work with the Amazon’s Look Inside WordPress Widget. PG will not indulge in speculation about whether another crazy person working at Brave Books or not.
PG also notes there’s a nice photo of the author with former President Trump or “King Donald” as he is apparently called in the book.
Fun fact: Back in the old Soviet Union, holders of unacceptable political views routinely were declared to be crazy. This allowed the person to be institutionalized without even a pretense of due process, while further marginalizing his political stance.
Well, obviously only the crazy would dare go against the party line.
Just like today only racists and homophobes worry about elementary school curricula.
Sane right-thinking folks bow and obey the absolutists.
QED.
It would be interesting to see what’s going on here–half the time when Amazon is accused of doing X bad thing it turns out to be a technical glitch, though if the author has evidence otherwise I will withdraw the objection.
“So, a crazy person decided to manipulate the hidden levers of Amazon to sabotage a book he/she/they/it didn’t like.”
There is zero evidence of any of that in the article. What I see in that article is someone choosing to stab at Big Tech for attention because conservatives hate Big Tech. This is a conservative book so the author is hoping the attention can boost the sales back up. No one is being cancelled here. This is a stunt.
You could be right, I. Unless Amazon decides to share whatever they find after their investigation, we won’t know for certain.
I do think all the one-star reviews from visitors who apparently didn’t buy the book is an indication that at least some were judging it for what it may have said without actually reading it.
Or, if you want to be conspiracy-minded, perhaps the publisher secretly arranged for the one-stars to gain free publicity for the book. If it was a publicity maneuver, it seems to have worked.
Good point. It reminds me of all those librarians and authors who claim kids are being deprived of insight into the emotional life of other kids growing up trans. Censorship? Sure, and the demise of democracy. Just another attempt to boost sales.