Tech Censorship Is Accelerating

That's weird. I bought a Mein Kampf, Das Capital, Anarchist Cookbook, Tropic of Cancer, and Ulysses recently from Az. Those were banned books. (Insert joke about Fed watch lists.)

Is Amazon going to deplatform Ann Coulter or Bill O'Reilly because they don't agree with their ideas? Are they going to pick-and-choose which books are allowed rather than sell what the market wants? How can we deconstruct or debate what you or I think is terrible writing if we can't access or purchase it?

The argument that businesses can sell whatever they want falls away when they become monopolies and gate-keep much of everyday life ubiquitously, influence (corrupt) government policy extensively, and can shut people and products out arbitrarily; that's inverted totalitarianism. The common tendency to deny the absurd power of megacorporations to influence attitudes and pick winners and losers is itself absurd.

Edit: Regardless of content, I hope such books are available on other platforms and use their banning as a cause celebre to defenestrate commercial censorship. Also, maybe I shouldn't buy products from such a platform in protest if they're going to Big Mother customers.

"'I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,' was [Voltaire's] attitude now." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall

This WSJ opinion article concerns the ban of a book titled "When Harry Became Sally", which is critical of sex-change procedures in children. Another similar incident was the ban of Abigail Shrier's "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters" from Target at the behest of activists on Twitter. That ban was later reversed, but it was followed up quickly by a ban of a different book on similar topics, "The End of Gender" by Debra Soh (https://thepostmillennial.com/target-bans-dr-debra-sohs-book...). This book was also then reinstated (https://reclaimthenet.org/target-silently-removes-then-reins...). And now, we see Amazon instituting book bans and preventing advertising of certain books based on ideological positions.

It's also interesting that it's not just activists pressuring tech companies and retailers to institute book bans but also the ACLU (https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-the-aclu-want-to-ban-my-bo...). To me, the hasty bans and reversals, the spreading of book bans, and the advocacy for the same from institutions like ACLU points to a bigger societal problem, a new extreme that "cancel culture" has extended itself to. I view this trend as especially problematic when mega corporations that face no effective competition, like Amazon or Google, can enact these bans unilaterally. These companies are so big, powerful, and influential that their policies have a drastic effect on limiting (the practical effects of) speech.

>Opinion

I don't agree with censorship.

I also don't agree that a private business should be forced to carry products it doesn't want to.

If I write a book on Satanism, should Lifeway (large Christian bookstore) be forced to carry it? If they don't carry it are they censoring me? Do I have a right to have my book carried at EVERY bookstore? Of course not.

Censorship is not a good thing, but it is also ridiculous how the supposed small government, ant-regulation, free and open market, capitalist right-wing thinks businesses should be forced to present views the business does not condone, agree with, or violates terms of use/service. These views are not congruent.