In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
nytimes.com
In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
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Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#2Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#3There is indeed a problem that the article describes: book pirates with very little oversight selling books on Amazon and making a profit for both. A result of this practice is that people get substandard copies of books with typos.
The headline suggests that these typos are sinister ("newspeak"). If that were true, that would be an entirely different and also disturbing problem. I did not find any mention of these errors to be so.
Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#4Previously posted this week here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20738152 .
Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#5Amazing how a site that started by selling books now does an awful job doing just that. Another reason Amazon et al should be broken up.
Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#6"On Sunday, Amazon said in a statement that “there is no single source of truth” [...]"
Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#7There is indeed a problem that the article describes: book pirates with very little oversight selling books on Amazon and making a profit for both. A result of this practice is that people get substandard copies of books with typos. The headline suggests that these typos are sinister ("newspeak"). If that were true, that would be an entirely different and also disturbing problem. I did not find any mention of these e…
I think the disturbing problem lies in the proliferation of sources of misinformation, not in the motivations of said sources. We live in an age where information distribution is so cheap and convenient that everyone has ended up bombarded by noise, and few have the time and education or luxury to sift through it all. In the end, maybe Orwell was wrong about the source of the corruption of society: it's not controlled by an oligarchy or big brother; it's an epiphenomenon of a burgeoning, hyperconnected, disorganized collective.
Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#8Amazing how a site that started by selling books now does an awful job doing just that. Another reason Amazon et al should be broken up.
How would Amazon being broken up stop people from selling illegitimate copies of books?
Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#9As I wrote in the previous HN thread:
>If you're wondering about some weird social ill plaguing society from the tech industry, 99% of the time the root cause of it is Section 230.
Which is also relevant to the big WSJ story today about Amazon's problem with fakes and unsafe products.
Re: In Amazon’s Bookstore, Orwell Gets a Rewrite
#10Amazing how a site that started by selling books now does an awful job doing just that. Another reason Amazon et al should be broken up.
How would Amazon being broken up stop people from selling illegitimate copies of books?
If Amazon the marketplace was solely responsible for the upkeep of the marketplace, they'd be more inclined to actually maintain it in a working manner. Not to mention it'd be easier for publishers to sue them to compel compliance.