Friendly reminder that the definition of censorship is not limited to the government.
The books they've banned may indeed be misinformation, but lets not push even more misinformation by denying simple dictionary definitions that seem politically unacceptable.
Censorship is censorship. It doesn't need to be a political body to make it so.
In the 80's, the idea of the corporate ran dystopian future where a megalomaniac controlled society through his mega corporation was seen as scary future.
Now we get the usual boot licking going on every time this topic is brought up as Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, and Google (Alphabet) actually put into practice real censorship and attempt to control the majority of online communication, ideas, and a good piece of all information over the internet.
What a turn for the worse we've taken as a society.
Like shouting "fire" in a crowded auditorium that is in fact not on fire? Let's call it what it is: we're talking about lying about things that can and will literally kill people.
Why should Amazon be expected to provide a platform for that?
And if you expect the theater to let you in when you come back to watch a movie the next day, you're going to be disappointed.
Which is to say, it came preassembled with a slippery slope.
What happens when the prevailing opinion in the future becomes that raising boys as boys is dangerous for their health? Girls as girls? Promoting religion to your children seen as dangerous to popular thought? Do we continue down this path and start banning literature on how to raise children properly, the bible? After all, it may disagree with YOUR OWN held opinion, so it must be removed, for the safety of the children, right?
We are entering the territory of cheering on the thought police, where you disregard your own faculties and off load all of your exposure to information and decision making to a highly select group of people, with their own biases, much of it monetarily motivated.
Do you understand what I'm saying to you?
Can't you really say this about the anti-vac community and the ones publishing and selling these books? Or am I reading your statement wrong and that's who you're speaking to?
So, a store deciding not to carry a book is the "thought police" but raising your child to eschew any behavior or, dare I say, thought that you deem insufficiently "boy-like" is....not the thought police?
How do you feel about Christian bookstores? Should they be forced to carry the Koran, satanic literature, atheist books, and everything else they might disagree with? Or is it ok for them to exercise "censorship" since they're not censoring any ideas you like?
In fact, it’s not just this building, every building is on fire. Right this second! And it’s your civic duty to join me in warning people.
I’ve written a book explaining all this and if Amazon won’t sell it in their store I’m going to cry foul.
If you can’t say I’m lying, is there a better word for it?
Amazon is not obligated to carry their merchandise any more than they would be obligated to carry any Amazon branded products in their own stores.
If anything, whenever Amazon is mentioned here, people come in to complain that they need to do more to remove garbage products from their website. Here's a garbage product that literally kills people when they use it. If it were a toaster, it would be yanked from the shelves and the manufacturer would be getting sued for wrongful death.
Answer this question to satiate my curiosity, what if Stripe and Paypal refuse to process credit card payments for these authors?
What if Square refuses to swipe cards at the flea market for the author?
They can always accept cash, checks, Bitcoin, barter.
This on top of Visa and Mastercard ban policies.
Something like Youtube would never be allowed to process credit cards if it didnt't have a big corporation/money behind.
I believe this will always be a concern unless cryptocurrency becomes widely accepted. Any centralized payment processing system will likely cause certain people to be excluded.
That's funny, because every time that I'm here lately I seem to see a pile of upvoted stories and comments about how [insert big company here] is committing [atrocity here]. Sometimes its true, but often its backed by little evidence other than someone's opinion.
I'm not convinced that things are nearly so imbalanced as you are making them sound.
What's wrong with something that's lewd or pornographic? It's far better than quackery.
Huh? Why would you make an exception for pornography in your definition of censorship? Porn is like the most obvious textbook example of censorship.
Perhaps it's a game of whack-a-mole and censorship trying to suppress vaccine misinformation, but the anti-vax movement is an actual real danger to society, and misinformation was cited as one of the problems in recent testimony before Congress by a teen who defied his parents’ anti-vaccination beliefs: "The sources which spread misinformation should be the primary concern of the American people." [1]
Fortunately this teen learned to think on his own ("learning to find credible research and information is fundamental to finding truth in a world of misleading facts and false views").
Ideally, I'd want everyone to learn to think critically, and to combat misinformation with information. I don't like the slippery slope of censorship either. But I also can't stand the fact that my children live in a world with kids who aren't vaccinated.
So I hesitatingly applaud Amazon here.
[1] https://www.help.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Lindenberger.pdf
From the Article: 'Wired magazine noted that Amazon is crowded with titles promoting unproven treatments for autism that include “sex, yoga, camel milk, electroconvulsive therapy, and veganism.”'
Removing books that contain outright lies isn't censorship. It's simple denying a platform for bald-faced liars to profit off misleading the public.
The phrase your looking for is "dangerous lies"
This isn't a reminder, it's an assertion that uses rhetoric to make itself sound more factual.
I operate a Little Free Library that is a net source of books (people in the neighborhood drop off boxes of books). This has had a number of effects I didn't foresee:
1) we have learned who visits seeking books (usually kids and their moms), a demographic I certainly want to encourage reading in, so we load the stock toward that demographic.
2) rarely we acquire some really great books.
3) Occasionally we get books that give me unintended insight about who's in my neighborhood, not in a good way. I throw them out. I have no problem with Mr. Bezos doing what amounts to the same.
We're not talking about censorship of valid information. It's censorship of invalid information. That's just good methodology.
Quite OT, but I've thought about doing this - how do you do this, practically speaking? Do you have a cupboard in the front of your house or do people actually come inside? Have you ever had to deal with vandalism? In what climate do you live, and what sort of infrastructure do you have?
It's a very big bird house on a pole in front of your house, just in front of the sidewalk. It's got a door with a window on it, so people can see the books. I live in a region with a cold climate and there are 7 or 8 exactly like what I'm describing in my neighbourhood. I don't personally have one but my wife wants to build one in the spring. Doesn't seem to be much of a vandalism magnet when they look so gosh-darn cute.
Well I was thinking more of a 'we're open Saturday mornings only' kind of deal, I can assure you I am far from the most generous, kindhearted person in the world :)
"I live in a region with a cold climate and there are 7 or 8 exactly like what I'm describing in my neighbourhood."
Does it work OK in rain and cold? It only gets to -10 C here so not even that cold, but it seems it would be hard to build the cute ones (like, all the results when Google Image searching 'little library') in a waterproof way.
Then again, I'm probably overthinking it and getting stuck in analysis paralysis like I usually do...
https://littlefreelibrary.org/build/
We live in Southern California and even we get rain. So using a plan is a good idea simply for the value that they've thought of things like eaves and sills. You need to commit to repainting every year or so, maintaining the caulk, etc.
it's the details and maintenance that make it. Ours looks good years on. One in the area is starting to look janky because they were too fancy with their first paint job and now it is in the dire need of paint. Another is just collection of rotten plywood at this point.
Might be a good idea to stock more history books in your library because that is precisely the same hubristic logic used by authoritarians throughout all time.
Ever so many of mankind's greatest scientific discoveries and moral progressions were deemed "invalid information" by "senior members of society", which is why the great thinkers of the Enlightenment fought for freedom of speech, thought, and information. It seems we no longer truly value those things as we are increasingly relying upon corporations to decide for us what is true and what isn't.
* "We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid." ― Benjamin Franklin
* "Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition." - Adam Smith
* "Being ignorant is not so much a shame, as being unwilling to learn." ― Benjamin Franklin
* "It is difficult to free fools from the chains their revere." - Voltaire
* "We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter." - Diderot
* "That Politics may be Reduced to a Science" - title of 1741 essay by Hume.
* "One unerring mark of the love of truth is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant." - Locke
* "The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception" - Spinoza
Shall I go on?
Here's a good starting point if you'd like to learn more:
They doubled down on this strategy with their on demand printing service - bypassing traditional publishing gate keepers.
When someone dispenses with long-standing policy it is noteworthy.
There's long tail and long tail. Amazon can still sell books about how to repair and maintain a 1936-era WLW Crosley Radio without also selling books informing the unfortunate gullible about how to "treat" their children's autism by DIY at-home electoconvulsion therapy.
Due to a long history - books in particular are seen as a bellweather of a societies attitudes towards censorship.
As much as I'm pained to be standing up for these anti-vaccination nuts, it's the thin end of the wedge.
The choice of not doing business with someone ceases to be a meaningful choice when it's the only viable alternative. One could argue that Amazon is not the only viable alternative and that argument is, strictly speaking, correct. However, this isn't a binary situation -- one day we have plenty of equally viable alternatives and the next day it's just Amazon -- but rather a continuum.
TL;DR: Amazon pulling stuff from their store is only a bad thing when taken together with not having a meaningful alternative. The latter is a bigger problem than the former.
When your storefront is 83% of the market[1], and you restrict choice, it's time for you to be broken up.
[1] - https://www.retaildive.com/news/apple-takes-a-page-out-of-am...
Wal Mart censors people too - if you don't comply with their morals, you can't promote yourself in their stores.
In this case the book as a product is not different from a trillion of other Amazon products. What makes it different is its content. So yes, this is censorship.
Not to mention, there's no need, as a customer, to inform the baker the purpose of the cake. Doesn't matter if you're taking it to a wedding, or using it as a prank. They make cake, you want cake.
If Amazon started saying "we won't sell these books to gay people" then, yeah that would be a problem.
Say a baker hand-makes dog-shaped cakes, among other cakes. The baker loves dogs. A client comes in and tells him he hates dogs and wants to order a cake for the purpose of ritually defiling it.
Would the baker be wrong in refusing to fulfill this order?
Legally, the baker would not be "wrong" in your scenario, though in my opinion they would at least be foolish. Defiling a cake does not harm a dog and once the customer pays for, it is their property to do whatever they want with.
How about if your dog-hater were driving late at night, they got tired and pulled over into a motel. They're signing in for a room and the topic of dogs comes up for whatever reason. They mention that they hate dogs and the motel owner says "Get out, we don't allow no dog-haters in here". Are they right to do that? Legally, again, they could, though they couldn't on the basis of sexual orientation (in some states) or race, religion, national origin (everywhere).
The Supreme Court has already sided with the baker on the basis of the cake being an artistic expression, so it's a moot point now.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colo...
"Masterpiece's owner Jack Phillips, who is a Christian, declined their cake request, informing the couple that he did not create wedding cakes for marriages of gay couples owing to his Christian religious beliefs, although the couple could purchase other baked goods in the store. "
It was not even a question in the lawsuit that a pre-made cake would have been an acceptable substitute.
I said "most people" because I'm sure there are people who have less formal, low-budget weddings where they grab any old cake from the grocery store. That is not what is understood when someone says "wedding cake".
Forced creation is as bad as forced speech.
And considering their humble and rather "anti-censorship" beginnings, it's rather disappointing to see what amazon has become. Seems like another case of you die a hero or you live long enough to be a villian.
If they were not a monopolist, then they could claim curation.
Once you achieve monopoly status, you can't claim to be a simple business anymore.
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/amazon-...
At that time, they controlled 65% plus of the online book market. Do you think it is less now?
They basically have no competition. A monopoly does not require 100%. For example, the Sherman Antitrust Act defines it as 75%. But, it's obvious that they are a monopolist in this area.