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Comment by m8s | Hacker News Reader

Freedom speech as defined in the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

What we are seeing here is a consequence of our capitalist society. It is now more profitable for eBay and other companies to pull or ban things that may cause controversy. There's no censorship here. You can find these books at other retailers. In fact, you're likely to see some businesses thrive by specifically carrying the things that other retailers refuse to carry.

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Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.

And the first amendment is not a definition of freedom of speech. Read it again.

I still don't see how stopping the sale of an item on a private company's platform equates to denying freedom of speech. If we were talking about a government banning the sale of a specific book, author, or topic, then I absolutely agree. If we are talking about that same government banning specific books from schools, then I absolutely agree. But I don't agree that eBay's move here is denying freedom of speech. They're just deciding what they do and don't want on their platform.

You are correct in terms about application of current laws. The issue is more complex though. We tend to associate books with ideas and exchange thereof. Explicit ban of an idea raises all sorts of issues regardless of any other issues that may have been related to it.

In simple terms, is it a good idea to ban algebra if a vocal enough community of anti-algebra people convince ebay to not list it?

How is eBay removing certain books from its marketplace banning an idea?

I am assuming good faith question and I will respond that way.

In US, the entire market is divvied up between various oligopolies. You can name an industry and you can usually find 3-4 dominant companies that drive the market. Ebay and Amazon have ridiculous market power and reach ( reinforced by Covid ), which effectively means that if book is not available on their virtual shelves, that book does not exist for the general population. Ergo, removal from Ebay equals removing of an idea from the 'marketplace of ideas'.

I am oversimplifying, but not by a lot.

It is not outright ban, rather banishment to a very inhospitable place, a Siberia of ideas, so to say. (Russia often sent dissenters to live in Siberia.)

If eBay was a tiny company, it would be nothing, but you cannot ignore the effects of scale and market dominance here.

It is similar to the smartphone world: if Google and Apple block you, in practice you are destroyed.

> In simple terms, is it a good idea to ban algebra if a vocal enough community of anti-algebra people convince ebay to not list it?

Is it OK for them to delist other things like spam and porn if enough people don't want to see them? If not, we're looking at a very different internet

If so, we can probably reason about the merits of delisting based on whether we feel algebra might be good and early twentieth century casual racism the rightsholders have disavowed might be bad (or at least, not so good eBay ought to feel compelled to incur reputational damage to continue to distribute it).

unlike adult content or spam, casual racism is an idea so important platforms ought not to impede its spread is an argument of course, just not a freedom of speech one.

It is a good counter-argument. I will admit that I still marvel at the way it is structured. I do not think I can match that. It is a compliment.

I will open by saying that, from my perspective, in accordance with Sturgeon's law, 80% of books on Ebay and Amazon ARE spam and should be delisted for the well-being of general populace and positive feeling of accomplishment for busy-bodies, who seem to be running those operations. If we start removing spam, we better get the proper authorities ready to remove the superfluous, pointless and downright dangerous material that spam produces.

Still, is your standard 'did enough people complain'? If so, that is a bad standard, and most certainly not how internet was devised, or was intended to work.

I think the issue I have with 'casual rasism' in this book is that I do not see it, and yet my access to the book is limited, because sufficient amount of people whined. In short, I do not buy this argument.

But lets say I do, and we want to talk spreading bad ideas. US is ok with allowing Mein Kampf. How is it different? Why are those ideas ok to spread, but not that one? How is attempting to destroy an entire population less offensive than 'casual racism'? Do we have some sort of diagram that shows how victimhood is rated?

The answer is really simple. It is not better or worse. It is just an idea. And if 'casual racism' is an idea, then its spread is absofuckinglutely a freedom of speech issue. Just not one one can easily get behind, because it is, well, bad. But that does not mean you can just pretend it does not exist.

> Still, is your standard 'did enough people complain'? If so, that is a bad standard, and most certainly not how internet was devised, or was intended to work.

No, though obviously it is a factor. I'm pretty sure it's not eBay's standard either. The rights holders, who are extremely familiar with the content, took the view the books are too racist to continue selling; eBay could have chosen to argue the other side and profit from people buying second hand copies at absurd prices to own the libs, but I don't see any particular reason why it should. Frankly categorising spam is at least as prone to disagreement as categorising racism, and I don't think spam has worse consequences. It possible the Seuss Foundation and eBay are excessively prudish about some of the books and certainly eBay's moderation policies are inconsistently applied, but that doesn't imply a website adding a few books to the list of stuff it doesn't want to sell on the grounds of they're bad enough for the publisher to have unpublished is a particularly chilling violation of speech. The internet has been prudish for a long time, as anyone trying to use Big Tech to sell nudes knows, and I really don't see racism as a less sensitive subject than sex.

As for how the internet was imagined to work, I'm pretty sure it's expected to work in exactly the same way as things normally do in Western democracies: people and corporations are generally free to choose who they do business with and what they sell except in very specific circumstances where it is deemed harmful (like refusing to do business with a particular race, or using market power to squeeze a competitor, or being a public utility). It is possible to argue that racism is an intrinsically valuable idea which deserves this sort of special protection which other forms of speech don't, and it's also possible to argue that the risks of curtailing good ideas by restricting any kind of communication is so severe that major retail platforms should be treated like ISPs and not allowed to have any influence on what's distributed by their service at all. But one of those involves explicitly privileging racism and the other throws out the possibility of those platforms attempting even the most cursory moderation, and probably other stuff most people here endorse like centrally-administered spam filters and ad blocking services too. Beyond those arguments we're not discussing speech right principles, we're discussing the details of what's silly [not] to ban.

Some organizations decide [some] ads are too disgusting to host, others decide the same thing about [some] racism. I find the intersection of people on here who believe the former is fantastic and the latter is chilling quite strange. Frankly I'm more uncomfortable about racism than ads, and I use uBlock's list of undesirable content as much as everyone else here.

I do appreciate the civil reply and agree that moderation is not consistent though.

If the free speech argument had anything to do with laws, people would be advocating settling it in court.

The kerfuffle is about values and whether moral people have power.

I agree it isn't government censorship.

But for those of us under pandemic lockdown, all human contact outside the home is over private companies' platforms. Seems to me if you're banned from all the major private platforms that's de factor censorship, if not de jure government censorship.

More broadly, this also seems like a gigantic political victory for republicans: A few months ago the most high profile banned-on-all-major-platforms story was about Parler, a site that had literally been used to coordinate an attempt to overthrow democracy. Hardly an argument that a big 'cancel culture' exists or is running out of control!

Now, the most high-profile story is about a beloved children's author and famed anti-fascist getting banned? You couldn't ask for better evidence of a 'cancel culture' run amok.

Can you name any time in history where the side burning books was in the right?

If as a society we allow companies, that are equal to (if not more powerful than) the government we elect, to pick and choose what parts of public discourse are acceptable or not, we have no one but ourselves to blame when this inevitably goes pear-shaped.

Like many other things in the past, what is legal right now may not be ethically and morally correct in the future.

You are correct that society as we know it does not cease to function immediately after the giants like amazon, facebook, twitter, ebay, etc. take a specific action like banning a book or banning a user. However, the longer term implications are far more concerning and the time to start contemplating these issues was yesterday (or any other time in the last few years). The next best time is now.

Nobody is burning these books, it is the estate that doesn't want to publish certain books anymore. So the party holding the rights doesn't want new books out.

What does a publisher's reversal about their wants have to do with selling books they already printed?

I don't think(?) eBay globally banned selling of past copies of Meinkampf while the copyright was cleverly held by a German State. Doing so is pretending copyright is a right that extends to sold property that is a copy, extending a right too far, while banning a class of books like MeinKampf for your own reasons is perfectly valid.

If they want to ban racist children's media on their platform then they should. That includes a lot of TinTin, popeye, Tom and Jerry, etc, that has never been classified as racist by some copyright holder.

edit- s/published/printed

I have a DVD of old Tom and Jerry, growing up I only saw the newer clips as I learned by seeing the recsit crap the old ones were. Same for some of the older Tintin, I have them as part of a collection, but my dear are the early ones set in Africa racist. Good as historical pop culture references, but by no means something to read, or watch, for fun or without some context.

Assuming good faith here, you may need to read the original article again. eBay is delisting 2nd hand copies of the books. That extends far beyond a publisher deciding not to continue printing their books.

Of course, if you believe that copyright should prevent the resale of goods, that's an entirely different story that ignores the current state of affairs in the world and the legislated rights of people in many countries (where there are such laws that prohibit limiting the resale of goods).

That also is not burning books. eBay is a private business choosing not to be involved in the sale of something against their policy. That doesn’t do anything to damage your copy or prevent you from using any of the many options available to sell it – you can probably even get a better deal now that these books are getting more publicity than they have had for half a century.

If the pandemic showed us anything, it's that goods that can't be bought online might as well not exist for the majority of people when you can't / won't leave the house. Fast forward another decade or two and this trend will probably only accelerate and we may no longer see brick-and-mortar stores that cater for niche items like books outside the top100 best sellers.

This is wrong on two levels: while many people have been buying more online, local stores certainly didn’t disappear (for that matter, the books we bought online last year came exclusively from two local bookstores), and buying online doesn’t only mean eBay.

> Can you name any time in history where the side burning books was in the right?

Well, after WWII, the USA engaged in their "denazification" of Germany, where they censored and burned Nazi materials.

Which side would you say they were on?

No-one's burning any books. A company has decided to stop printing and selling a few books. This is the exact same commercial decision they make every day for thousands of books.

There's probably a useful discussion about whether orphaned works should be protected by copyright.

But it's madness to suggest that once a publisher has published a book they're somehow compelled to continue publishing that book in perpetuity.

You may need to re-read the article. This eBay deciding that these books should no longer be distributed. The publisher's decision to stop priting it is irrelevant to the discussion.

Ah yes the old "just build your own internet" argument.

You can literally buy these books on Amazon right now.

https://www.amazon.com/If-Ran-Zoo-Classic-Seuss/dp/039480081...

This questionable book that Dr. Seuss Enterprises no longer wishes to publish can be at your front door tomorrow. Enjoy.

How long do you think it will be before Amazon follows suit?

Relegating books to a market outside of the largest sellers basically amounts to erasing them. Sure, in this case people could still find them, because they are from a famous author. But what about unknown writers, with views that don't align with what is approved by the PC crowd?

For the record, I have never read a Dr. Seuss book and don't encourage racial stereotyping, but there are other edgy subjects (like the legalization of certain substances) that I can imagine becoming less fashionable at some point in time. I don't want to see books supporting this idea suppressed at some point in the future.

We should be very careful with this new self regulating market, that follows the loudest outcry to determine what they allow to be sold.

New? Isn’t it freedom?

The government isn’t involved. Or should it be and it force you to sell everything?

People can complain that something is bad without calling for the government to ban it. They can even explicitly say that the government shouldn’t ban it, while also saying that the people doing it should stop.

I know your comment wasn't meant to spin off another thread, but I do believe you're touching at something quite significant. We as a society have become way too comfortable with using the government to stop behaviour we don't like, to the point that people automatically jump to that conclusion during political arguments.

This situation quite literally is not using the government. So y’all are complaining about the non-government system working in the way you’d expect it to?

There are surely going to be more voices advocating for removing racist stuff than those arguing to keep it. One side inherently has the advantage. So without the government getting involved, what exactly are y’all suggesting?

Bringing people to our side of the argument. Improving the culture so we're not erasing the past. There's no way around winning the hearts of the people.

Caught on a technicality yet again. I should have said "new type of self regulating market".

Obviously every free market is self regulating, but we never had this mixture of a limited selection in dominating online sellers and the amplifying effect the internet has on any kind of outcry.

The government has nothing to do with my argument. We don't need laws against this (yet), but we should keep an eye out for changes that will push counterculture underground. Dialogue beats suppression any day in my book.

What’s a new type of self-regulating market that doesn’t involve new laws?

We have more selection at our finger tips than any time in history. I guarantee if I wanted those books, I could find them without leaving my desk.

There's a good chance you will never know the books exist in the first place if they are not allowed to be sold on the largest platforms. Surely you are not denying that availability is a factor in exposure?

Free speech is also an ideal that some people find value in outside of a legal context. People obviously care about being told what they can say and think, indepenant of the law.

What we are seeing is not an inevitable consequence of capitalism and reducing it to a profit motive misses much of the picture. It may benefit eBay's bottom line, but there other other factors at play.

For example, the public expectations of private companies are changing, as more people want them to act as arbiters of morality. Similarly, corporations are increasingly adding social ideals to their objectives. While there is clearly a PR aspect at play, corporate leaders and shareholders can and do balance moral objectives against their bottom line.

I think what people are reacting to is the feeling that they are loosing control to corporations over the direction of social change. Just as individuals can feel disempowered in the face of corporate influence in political arena, individuals feel disempowered by corporate influence in field of morality and social change.

Ah, yes, "freedom of speech", the concept invented in the USA that only has one authoritative definition in the US Constitution. /s

I don't know how often I've had to point this out, but the US constitution is irrelevant here. You might as well refer to your favourite monty python sketch for all I care.

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