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Comment by jaimex2 | Hacker News Reader

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jaimex2

If you want to send a clear message to eBay you can close your account here.

https://www.ebay.com.au/help/account/changing-account-settin...

It should not be up to them what is and isn't offensive.

I did the same to Netflix last year. Money talks at the end of the day.

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and thus, the cancel cold war escalates another step

it's a great opportunity for competitors

It's not cancel culture when you opt out of something, it's cancel culture when you decide for others that that they can't do something.

Throwing these books away isn't cancel culture. Telling other people they can't sell or buy the book is cancel culture.

I mean what's the alternative? The language companies speak is that of money. How are you supposed to combat this without "fighting fire with fire"?

eBay has been determining what's too offensive for its platform since the very beginning, as has more or less every other website on the internet, including this one.

So the real line in the sand being drawn here isn't about the principle of moderation but what is being moderated. In this case, the idea it was offensive wasn't even original to eBay: the publisher decided it was inappropriate to sell and eBay followed.

So a flurry of account cancellations isn't going to signal opposition to the principle of moderation so much as angry denial that images like this[1] could be deemed racist. That's a point of view of course, but all eBay get out of it is "wow, the other side of the culture war is even more obsessive"

[1]https://www.cbc.ca/kidsnews/content/DrSuess_Board_2.png

I'm just so offended that you would economically harm all the good people working at EBay due to political stances they might not even agree with. People are so reactionary these days. This is the real cancel culture.

Is this sarcasm? eBay is a publicly traded multi-billion dollar corporation. If they do something I hate, why would I ever shop there again?

Yes, it is very clearly sarcasm. "I'm just so offended" is your tip-off.

Honestly I can't tell anymore. Feel like I'm in crazy land whenever I fall into a thread like this.

Yeah, fair enough!

No I'm dead serious, you are actually doing the thing you are claiming to prevent. There's a new Red Scare going around and it's costing people their livelihoods. First Ebay canceled, then all American companies, then all of America.

Don't want to be a mouth piece for a 50 year old children writer? Canceled! It's basically just virtue signaling, but the effects are huge.

Going to any Christian owned businesses? Are they canceled too because they burned Galio's books? Rank hypocrisy. Go my tribe I guess.

Dude, if US companies want to engage in this woke nonsense, then I quite frankly think they deserve to be cancelled. This country is honestly so pathetic, IMO, in the way that we pretend to be a "free speech" nation and yet in reality live under a woke thought police that has taken over through Twitter. I will eagerly and gladly take my business to Chinese companies, as not only do they stand for more traditional values that I tend to align with, but they are also innovating more rapidly (probably because they just focus on the tech and don't have to worry about every little thing they say).

You're joking, right?

The same argument was used to stop embargoes against apartheid South Africa...that was somewhat explicable given the poverty of South Africa, using it for a multi-billion tech company. Interesting take.

If enough people do it they will back peddle.

Big tech really needs to get the memo that they need to be a neutral party.

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