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Comment by reader5000 | Hacker News Reader

This simply opens up a place in the market for uncensored book sales. If I want an honest search of the web I don't go to Google because they heavily censor and bias their search results. If I want to peruse the true set of literature on a particular topic I don't go to Amazon for the same reasons. I really don't see this "safe space" strategy paying off for these major tech brands. The holier-than-thou internet simply makes itself irrelevant. People can tell the difference between an honest retrieval of information versus a heavily censored retrieval of information in accordance with some ideological canon.

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If the "ideological canon" is that they only offer information that is consistent with observable reality, I don't have a problem with that.

"Consensus" particularly in complex empirical areas (e.g. are eggs healthy?) is observably in constant flux with various strategic actors exerting heavy influence. For any question more complex than pure math there is always uncertainty and strategic bias.

I very much doubt there is any flux around whether or not forcing your child to drink bleach will cure their autism.

Personally, I am glad there are strategic actors exerting heavy influence on the "don't force your child to drink bleach" agenda. You can add me to the list: don't force your child to drink bleach. Ok?

Thats fine but I get to decide if I want to buy a book about drinking bleach to cure autism, Amazon doesn't decide it for me.

Amazon has no power over whether or not you buy it. They only decide whether or not they sell it. If you want to contact the author or publisher or another bookseller and purchase it, please explain how Amazon is preventing you from doing that?

Fine, so buy it somewhere else. Better think long and hard about the legalities of giving anyone bleach to drink, though.

But you don't get to decide whether mixing bleach into your kids' Yoo-Hoo is in their best interest. Because it empirically isn't. A parent who tried to do this would be justifiably arrested on child endangerment charges, and no amount of "parents' rights" kvetching would negate that. And if some parent went on to write a book boosting this idea, Amazon would be roundly condemned if it knowingly allowed that book to be sold on its platform.

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