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Comment by pineaux | Hacker News Reader

Ebay is not the government. Just start your own red-pilled eBay and sell Mein Kampf and Dr. Seuss

What's funny about this situation is that you can still buy copies of Mein Kampf on Ebay but not copies of Dr. Seuss books.

Wherever you stand on the issue of whether or not Ebay can/should be able to ban Dr. Seuss books on their marketplace that fact alone is damn weird.

Is Mein Kampf sold as a children's book? I meant it in the context of children's books. Would you think "Marquis de Sade" would be a good book to sell as a children's book?

Are children even allowed to buy stuff on EBay? If no, why does it matter?

Depends on their parents opsec.

>Is ...xxxx... sold as a children's book?

"Every book is a children's book, if the kid can read."

Mitch Hedberg

But seriously, is who the book is aimed at relevant?

In other words, "won't somebody please think of the children?"

‘ Plenty of controversial items—including Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and “The Turner Diaries,” a novel popular with white-supremacist groups—were available on eBay as of Wednesday evening. When asked, the spokeswoman said these two books also fell in the “offensive material” category and would be removed. On Thursday afternoon it appeared that “The Turner Diaries” was no longer available on eBay.’

From the article at least, it appears eBay will also remove those books.

but this was brought about because of the Seuss ban. not in its own merit. it sounds quite disingenuous.

Ebay has had an "offensive material" policy since at latest 2018 -- that's the earliest that Wayback Machine has a capture of the URL that the present "offensive material" policy is at.

https://web.archive.org/web/20180705090957/https://www.ebay....

The 2018 one probibits "items that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance, or promote organizations with such views"

I am not sure to what extent or in what ways it has been enforced against what sorts of items. Perhaps it has been enforced unevenly or mostly not? I suspect that nazi memorabilia, at least, has been consistently rejected for a while.

But the policy is not new.

The today one at that URL gets into a lot more specific details than the 2018 one, including prohibiting "Items with racist, anti-Semitic, or otherwise demeaning portrayals, for example through caricatures or other exaggerated features, including figurines, cartoons, housewares, historical advertisements, and golliwogs"

It looks like those details were there as early as Nov 2020, not sure how long before that. But that predates the current Seuss controversy.

https://web.archive.org/web/20201112030930/https://www.ebay....

In closing, the Internet Archive is doing some really important work. I should go send them some bucks again.

It's been a week and Mein Kampf is still available on Ebay.

I recently read "They Thought They Were Free (Germans 1930-1945)" where he mentions that after the war the Germans were amazed to hear that you could still buy Mein Kampf in the United States throughout the entirety of World War II. The US used to be a bastion of free speech and classical liberal values. Oh how things have changed.

Please tell me how your speech is being limited.

While many other bans, especially on social media, seem to me to be quite nuanced, banning the re-sale of an old book is insane. Who does it hurt of this book is still sold? There are good reasons not to publish it for children anymore. There are good reasons not to stock it in a book shop. There are good reasons not to lend it to children in a library. But why would you prevent two people from selling it between themselves at a (digital) marketplace?

The re-sale of the book is NOT banned. You're free (at least in some cities) to sell that awful book on a filthy blanket on the sidewalk if you want. You're free to put an ad in the newspaper. Just because a single company doesn't want to be associated with something that is hurtful does not mean you are prevented from trading in whatever book you desire.

It IS banned on eBay. Who does this protect? Who is hurt if A sells a Seuss book with hurtful stereotype pictures to B on eBay?

This is not like Facebook amplifying someone's vile posts and showing them to hundreds or thousands of people. It's just a 1:1 transaction for a physical object that contains racist depictions.

Tell me, should the government force ebay to sell this book? Or should Ebay be free to decide themselves? I don't get why everyone is so worked up.

Ebay should be forced to allow buyers and sellers to trade anything that is not illegal. They should not be forced to promote items they do not want to promote, but they should not have the final say on whether I can sell or buy an item on their platform.

Why should they not have the final say? It’s their platform. By the way, in eBay’s seller terms & condx, I guarantee there’s a clause where sellers give up any recourse if eBay decides for any reason to delist your items.

Makes you wonder if Adolph kept getting royalty checks from the us.

Yes. That happened. Also, IBM sold machines that were used to further the holocaust to germany during the war.

And Bayer now makes aspirin instead of chemical weapons. They've come a long way since their US and Canadian property was confiscated during WWI.

In WWII Bayer used slave labor in its factories that were inside of concentration camps.

I mean, the US was really close to just do nothing. And nazi support was pretty strong until late in the war.

Of course, that wouldn’t work. Any platform that is “X, but with slightly relaxed rules” becomes a magnet for people who really really care about those particular rules not being enforced.

If the enforcement effort is nontrivial (e.g., moderating a global social media platform), this dynamic is a moat for the company doing the enforcement. Every time they introduce a new rule that the majority of their users don’t care much about, they strengthen the moat. So over time they’ll find an equilibrium with the strictest rules they can get away with.

I don’t mean this happens intentionally, but rather in an evolutionary, survival of the fittest sort of way.

Permitting the sale of a book is hardly a right extremist position. Erasure of the harm done is equally problematic.

I am not saying it is. I wasn't aware that ebay still sold Mein Kampf, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing. I read Mein Kampf it's really not that special. But I meant selling Mein Kampf as children's books. And I don't think Dr. seuss is hitler. On the contrary, I think they are miles apart. I am just tired of all the pro-capitalist, pro-freedom people who are telling some company that they aren't allowed not to sell a book. Just start your own platform then and sell the things that ebay doesn't. Nobody will care. I certainly won't. That being said, I think it is good that old books, traditions and stories are held against the light of racism and discrimination.

> I wasn't aware that ebay still sold Mein Kampf, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing.

Mein Kampf is listed as a Best Seller on Amazon.

Edit: I'm not sure why I was downvoted. What I wrote is literally true. There is a Best Seller badge next to the first version that is listed, when searching for Mein Kampf.

> Ebay is not the government.

Hum... No, it's just a monopolist that gatekeeps a lot of people's right to commerce.

Are you claiming that the governments of the places it's relevant shouldn't care about what they do?

hmm i wonder what percent of the market ebay controls in buying books

On buying used books. Or, phrasing it another way, how much of the market of random people selling stuff it controls.

Yeah its not like amazon, facebook marketplace, Craigslist, or literally millions of local marketplaces exist for this sort of thing

This. And also: if they don't exist. Open a new one! There is no law against it. And we would stand shoulders to shoulder if and when the government would ever propose such a law. But until that time, stop whining.

Are you implying you don't think a typical bookstore should have Mein Kampf on the shelves? Why?

Or are you just trying to suggest that Dr. Seuss is somehow comparable to Adolf Hitler?

Yes, I am implying that a typical bookstore shouldn't have Mein Kampf for sale. And as a matter of fact, I think a typical bookstore doesn't have it. Are you implying that they should have it? I am suggesting that Dr. Seuss is comparable to hitler in this context: they shouldn't be in the children's section. Just like I think Marquis de Sade shouldn't be in the children's section.Do you think that bookstores should be forced to sell books that contain racist charicatures?

There is a difference in a bookstore choosing not to offer select children's books because their content violates the owners sensibilities, and a mall preventing a bookstore to sell a children's book because the mall owner finds the book offensive.

Both are quite normal. What if the bookstore owner decided to only sell porn? The mall van decide to force the bookstore to stop that. That's just how it works. The bookstore is a client of the mall. So the mall decides.

never compare anything ever to Hitler or the Nazis. however bad they may seem.

i'm getting downvoted for protesting comparisons to Hitler! How can anyone fail to see how offensive this practice is.

It's because you're wrong. Treating Hitler as unique and unrepeatable will inevitably lead to a repeat.

> Yes, I am implying that a typical bookstore shouldn't have Mein Kampf for sale. And as a matter of fact, I think a typical bookstore doesn't have it.

Really? Trying the "check availability" feature on https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/mein-kampf-hitler-adolf/112..., for example, it looks like most local B&N outlets have it in stock.

Dr. Seuss is a "gateway drug" to Curious George and Babar the Elephant

Funny that you mention that:https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=mein+kampf

Apparently, eBay has no problem with Adolf Hitler, but Dr. Seuss somehow is a horrible racist.

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