When Bryant also began receiving one-star reviews on her book which was still in the editing process, she knew she was being targeted.
The same user has left thousands of reviews, often giving low ratings for LGBT+ authors’ books, but when Bryant contacted Goodreads she said they told her: “After taking a careful look at the ratings, we found that they did not violate our terms so we won’t be able to take any action against them.”
In its community guidelines, Goodreads, which was acquired by Amazon in 2013, states that “hate speech, bigotry, threats, and ad hominem attacks are not tolerated”, and asks users not to “misrepresent your identity or create accounts to harass other members, abuse features, or evade our rules”.