Controversy about campaign to write positive Book of Mormon reviews on Amazon

Last updated on: March 1, 2016 at 2:43 pm by Dan Peterson

Controversy about campaign to write positive Book of Mormon reviews on Amazon 2016-03-01T14:43:51-07:00 Dan Peterson

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This Wikimedia CC photograph was taken in October 2012 from the Provo, Utah, campus of Brigham Young University, which is also known as “the focus of evil in the modern world.”

Forget the Syrian refugee crisis, the rise of Caesarotrumpism, famine in sub-Saharan Africa, the threat of worldwide pandemics, the possibility of a terrorist attack on American soil, and global warming. There’s a real horror out there.

Go fetch your smelling salts before you read any further. And be sure that you first surround yourself with pillows, lest you faint dead away and injure yourself.

It seems that somebody connected with the Provo Utah Young Single Adult 9th Ward has encouraged members of that ward to go to Amazon.com and leave positive reviews there — effectively their testimonies — of the Book of Mormon:

http://fox13now.com/2016/02/29/controversy-after-lds-church-members-told-to-give-book-of-mormon-5-stars-on-amazon/

Apparently, this is unprecedented. (Although it must be admitted, contrary to the headline, that nothing in the sinister Mormon directive actually seems to expressly order its minions to post five-star reviews.)

In the history of Amazon.com reviews, which have always been posted according to the most rigorous scientific standards and methodology, nobody has ever encouraged people on a message board or a website or elsewhere to swarm in to Amazon and post negative or positive reviews of a new or controversial item. No publisher or author or author’s family has ever sought to boost ratings on Amazon.com.

Until this unethical campaign by LDS Inc., the Amazon.com ratings of the Book of Mormon were perfectly objective and precisely representative of global public attitudes on the subject. Their even distribution — 5 stars (53%), 4 stars (2%), 3 stars (1%), 2 stars (1%), and 1 star (43%) — reflects calm, reflective, dispassionate judgment entirely untainted by prejudice. It would be simply absurd, in the light of those numbers, to suppose that critics of the Church might have sought to drag the numbers for the Book of Mormon down in any way remotely comparable to the criminal efforts of the Mormon cult.

Moreover, since this little campaign stems from the Provo YSA 9th Ward, it’s a measured and appropriate response to file a complaint with Amazon.com against Brigham Young University and the world headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and to treat this as a scandal of the first order.

I think I need to go lie down for a few minutes.

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