About 5 years ago a friend of mine was saying, "yeah, it's bad at the universities but it doesn't affect the real world." Pretty funny how quickly things accelerated. I'd like to get off this ride.
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Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay
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Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is one thing for libraries and bookstores to decide not to offer for borrowing or sale things that they disagree with. Ebay is a private merchant. They can choose what to list too. Maybe this presents a copyright problem with clones, we don't know. I found the books by googling the title and PDF because I was curious about why they were removed. Curiosity satisifed and I still love Dr. Seuss.
No one fails to make this "hey, it's a private company" point in these discussions. It's always brought up when someone is criticizing a tech behemoth for censorship of some kind, and it's nearly always a non-sequitur. Guess what? It's totally fine and valid to criticize private entities even when their conduct is perfectly lawful. Thought experiment: imagine eBay and Amazon started to promote Neo-Nazi literature on…
Insert that picture of a person being stepped on with the text "At least its not the government"
At what point to we step up and say, these megacorps have as much power over our lives as the government. And in some cases more. The US government would struggle to ban a book world wide but ebay and amazon can do it pretty easily.
Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yup. The adults in the room should have nipped this crap in the bud but instead they entertained it. Now it’s a much bigger problem to solve. Check out SFUSD renaming racists schools like “Lincoln High”. Eventually parents had start a recall effort to end it.
Pretty sure they tabled it for now but it definitely did not end.
Do you mean shelved? Tabled means it's been put forth for discussion and action.
Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is one thing for libraries and bookstores to decide not to offer for borrowing or sale things that they disagree with. Private libraries can do whatever they like. Public ones should be required to carry even the most offensive book.
You realize that libraries are not infinite in space or capacity, right? Every book in a library necessarily pushes out some other book that could have been in there but didn't make the cut. Given that, libraries shouldn't be required to carry every book, they should optimize their collections for what their local users want to read. If it turns out that old out of print childrens' books aren't popular, then why shou…
> for what their local users want to read
were their local readers asked if these books were offensive? Or was this pushed over them?
Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay
#225About 5 years ago a friend of mine was saying, "yeah, it's bad at the universities but it doesn't affect the real world." Pretty funny how quickly things accelerated. I'd like to get off this ride.
What data did your friend use to come to that conclusion? Would you be willing to share so we can come to our own conclusions based on the evidence presented?
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Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay
#226Now this part is getting a little too carried away. It is one thing for libraries and bookstores to decide not to offer for borrowing or sale things that they disagree with. It is another (and overstepping imo) for Ebay to restrict individual people from selling to others goods that are not illegal or in violation of their other practical rules (no selling jewelry, monetary equivalents, etc). This falls into the cate…
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Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay
#227I don't know what is in these books, so not going to comment about whether they should be delisted or not.
But, eBay is doing a really shit job at this in a way that ensures almost everyone will be mad at them.
- They have delisted many copies of this book
- They still have dozens of copies available still listed
Literally the first search I did - the name of one of these books - found many still-listed ones.
If you're going to enact a policy, at least do it consistently.
Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay
#228Are kids actually learning racism is ok from these books or are they enjoying the art and simplistic ideas of the story? Do adults read these books and enthusiastically think.. This author gets it. No, thats just ridiculous. Why does every corporation feel the need to play out these stunts? More free press and discussions on social media. A part in the news cycle. They do it, Because it gets them more in return. If i…
I had a flick through one of the banned books I have and I was unable to fault anything in it. I had to look up what the problem was and then check back and I felt it was a really big stretch to call it offensive.
Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay
#229About 5 years ago a friend of mine was saying, "yeah, it's bad at the universities but it doesn't affect the real world." Pretty funny how quickly things accelerated. I'd like to get off this ride.
Unfortunately your only choices today are this or overt neo-Naziism. You have to stake out the most extreme, divisive, fanatical position possible. If you try to be nuanced and rational you get attacked by both sides. I think social media has a lot to do with it. We created a global communication medium and then programmed it to prioritize the most "engaging" content, which is of course the most triggering and contro…
I've seen you make a lot of good comments but this comment feeds the problem you're describing.
Either I have to agree with obviously stupid stuff from "my side" or I'm with the nazis? That only empowers the stupid at the end of the day.
Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately your only choices today are this or overt neo-Naziism. You have to stake out the most extreme, divisive, fanatical position possible. If you try to be nuanced and rational you get attacked by both sides. I think social media has a lot to do with it. We created a global communication medium and then programmed it to prioritize the most "engaging" content, which is of course the most triggering and contro…
I've seen you make a lot of good comments but this comment feeds the problem you're describing. Either I have to agree with obviously stupid stuff from "my side" or I'm with the nazis? That only empowers the stupid at the end of the day.
I don't think that way, but that's the wider dynamic I've seen in play for years. On one hand you have 4chan /pol, and on the other hand you have "woke" Twitter mobs. The whole thing seems gamified and the participants all seem to be playing a video game where getting attention or scoring a kill (trolling, offending someone, getting someone cancelled, etc.) is the objective. Gamified social media seems to be increasingly pulling the whole culture along for a ride.
Of course maybe I am succumbing to the "the nuts are always the loudest" effect.
Edit: I don't think the Internet per se is at fault. I lay the blame squarely at the feet of the "algorithmic timeline." Social media isn't neutral. It's programmed to "engage" us, which usually means either offending us or luring us into some kind of cult.
Chan culture isn't algorithmic in this way, but it's organized primarily around influencing algorithmic social media from outside and as such operates within the same algorithmic attention-maximization game paradigm.
TL;DR: this is not discourse. It's a video game.