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One of the most popular books on the "ban" lists is Handmaid's Tale. If you read that and classify it as pornographic, I might direct you to retake high school English to brush up on reading comprehension.
There's also a huge difference between the government banning content and private entities banning sale of that content on their platform but OK.
A legal difference yes, but not a political one.
Back when I was a democrat, the democrat party would not have stood for this.
Let's be precise with our words. A monopoly doesn't mean no competition. Amazon only controls 50% of the online+offline print book market which as far as monopolies go isn't as dominant as Google's 88% and closer to iOS's ~50%. It's a dominant position but there's plenty of room for you to go obtain books elsewhere. Additionally, self-publishing has never been easier.
> Can you be an investigative journalist who correctly investigates and publishes your unbiased results if only one of those results will be able to earn you money? Really?
No idea what this is about. If we're still on the can't publish anything "anti-trans" topic, might be worthwhile to consider that people identifying as trans make up less than half of 1 percent of the population (~0.4% if we're rounding up). Maybe there just isn't actually all that much interest in a niche population that has no power?
No they recognized the power imbalance and corrected it. That's the party I left. Lord knows what it has become.
May be useful to read up on the data behind the bans.
https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/theres-confusion-ov...
https://pen.org/report/banned-in-the-usa-state-laws-supercha...
Do I agree with all the curatorial decisions? No of course not. However, it's not censorship, it's curation of material for children's consumption.
On the other hand, Amazon's censorship is targeted at adults. You're correct that Amazon itself is only 50% of the marketplace. But Amazon is not just Amazon the company. It's also a marketplace where other sellers are. Altogether, those sellers constitute 40% of the e-commerce market. Again, a significant portion. Their decision to not allow those selling 'controversial' books on their market (and keep in mind they will sell you all kinds of depraved pornographic material. You can even buy Mein Kampf on amazon [1]) is basically greatly limiting the distribution of the book. That is un-American.
Censorship is not just about government. At some point people need to get that. It's just like redlining. Businesses cannot decide to en masse deny the market to an entire group of people or ideas.
[1] adults should be able to. Children may be not.
Was there a change to the constitution I'm unaware of? Children have all the same rights as adults albeit there are certain limited situations where those rights are allowed to be restricted or impinged. Not that book banning is a 1st amendment issue for students.
We're in agreement that it's OK to curate that content. However, that curation should not be random parents complaining and creating permanent bans on content, which is how this book banning works.
> However, it's not censorship, it's curation of material for children's consumption
> On the other hand, Amazon's censorship is targeted at adults
When I like it it's curation and when I don't it's censorship. Got it.
(Because like, libertarians and the ACLU are not going to get mad at Amazon for deciding what rules they want to enforce in their own marketplace. Which makes me read your comment as just another instance of shouting “fuck the libertarians!” that I above called a phenomenal waste of conservative resources. Like, why? There shouldn't be this strange alliance between the “only government that can be trusted is a dead government” people and the fucking political Left, like, WTF if that’s what’s going on)
I fully agree that you can't use the law to force Amazon to unban the books.
I'm just saying that private sector book ban for adults is more damaging than the removal of controversial material in children's libraries.
Just to be clear, what you need to understand if you want to bring them back Right is that for them "damaging" is defined by "someone shows up with a gun at your house and tells you to do something that you don't want to do." Amazon can do whatever, precisely because the people who Amazon sends to your house, like they might have a gun if they're practicing open-carry, but they don't tell you to do anything that you don't want to do. They literally cannot define any damage that Amazon is doing by manipulating their marketplace, because Amazon's not sending out the Men With Guns.
And just to be clear, again, I don't agree with my friends on these matters, I just find it absolutely fucking nuts that back when I was a hardline conservative I made these friends and now that I'm moderate and independent somehow they are the ones that I'm seeing supporting Kamala and the Democrats.