Live data from Hacker News

Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

wsj.com

651–660 of 1001 posts

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#651
post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thi…

You’re being downvoted because people here would rather pretend to be heroes standing up to the “woke mob” than acknowledge the reality that nobody is forcing the Seuss estate or even eBay to do anything. No surprise that so many non-white people report problems in tech circles given the moral grandstanding on behalf of some caricatures going on here.

"No surprise that so many non-white people report problems in tech circles given the moral grandstanding on behalf of some caricatures going on here."

That is a massive non-sequitur. How do you even know what are the skin colors of individual people who defend the books? Are people of certain colors obliged to have the same values?

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#652

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too many people support the development of powerful weapons without considering what happens when their enemies get a hold of them.

The “weapon” here is just basic conscientiousness. A publisher decided to stop publishing some books because they denigrate people, and eBay decided that they did not want to be facilitating the sale of books that denigrate people. We are not talking about an H-bomb - there is no power structure wielding a “cancel button” here.

>The “weapon” here is just basic conscientiousness

No, it's predominantly white-driven top-down (upper 20% income bracket) classism run amok, proping up specialist careers and pretending to be about "caring" and "wokeness".

>there is no power structure wielding a “cancel button” here.

Yeah, no "power structure", just the mainstream media, the corporate world, ad agencies, governments, government agencies, web-mobs, FAANG - the biggest tech companies in the world plus Clouldflare and others, payment processors, the "good society" class wise and so on, with an increasing number of BS laws on their side too...

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#654
post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 thi…

You’re being downvoted because people here would rather pretend to be heroes standing up to the “woke mob” than acknowledge the reality that nobody is forcing the Seuss estate or even eBay to do anything. No surprise that so many non-white people report problems in tech circles given the moral grandstanding on behalf of some caricatures going on here.

>than acknowledge the reality that nobody is forcing the Seuss estate or even eBay to do anything.

How do you know this?

Maybe efforts in previous years made them do it now?

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#655

As dis-heartening as this story is, compared to a couple of years ago, it is encouraging to see lots of comments from people beginning to wake up to what is going on with this craziness and not being modded here. Free speech is about protecting the right of the un-popular and views that some may find utterly repugnant. Why? because, as we are seeing with all of the woke craziness, when you don't stand up for everyone…

There's two kinds of freedom: freedom from and freedom to. These are some children's books that contain illustrations that some people find offensive and the publisher (and sellers) are deciding they no longer want to be associated with and sell to children. There are internet forums where the images are available and people can view them without the police knocking your door down, and I'm sure these are available in…

> "utterly repugnant"

You forgot to add: "to someone, probably a minority, possibly entirely wrong".

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The “weapon” here is just basic conscientiousness. A publisher decided to stop publishing some books because they denigrate people, and eBay decided that they did not want to be facilitating the sale of books that denigrate people. We are not talking about an H-bomb - there is no power structure wielding a “cancel button” here.

Using the word "denigrate" would be a reason to cancel you for some very conscientious minds. It sounds too similar to, ya know. And you aren't even talking Chinese [1] [1] https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/08/professor-sus...

Absolutely. If illirik was sacked from their job and made destitute, would that be "just basic conscientiousness"?

Maybe illirik should consider that the cancel culture weapon could just as easily be turned on them.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#657
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and from a platform that still allows Mein Kampf to be listed it seems especially idiotic... Edit, to add: as a comment below notes eBay only allows annotated versions of the book. So maybe they are consistent; I didn’t click through any of the listings when I searched. I also have no idea how you annotate Mein Kampf to not be racist/anti-Semitic propaganda...

It's the next step of corporate virtue signaling. Just repeating slogans on twitter or changing the bio and profile of a company account will not be enough anymore, instead pick a ridiculous hot topic from the news cycle and use this as an opportunity to implement an even more ridiculous policy change in your company to show that your company is down with the cause. I bet we will see even more of that.

I've occasionally observed parallels between the 4chan-esque mob and the woke mob.

It's the power of peer pressure combined with the apparently human tendancy to encourage others to do things we know are wrong for our own amusement. It's the playground mentality where a bunch of kids stand around goading another kid into doing something terrible chanting "do it, do it". With each success the groups find new levels of perversion to push their members to.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#658

I don't know any culture that banned books independent of their content that people didn't regret in the future. A few months ago I was reading about schools banning the book "To Kill a Mockingbird" because it contains basically the "n" word. I'm not american, and and havent read that book. I watched the movie, through, and it seemed to me to be a very anti racism message. I think instead of banning, schools should w…

Language is such a weird reach for a progressive critique of To Kill a Mockingbird. It's a book about a false rape allegation!

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#659
post #301

It has to be made clear that this isn't about legality. It's also not about whether this "technically qualifies" as "banning" or "censorship". It's about what kind of society we want to live in. I want to live in an open society. I want to be able to watch movies and read books that offend people. I want to be my own censor and I want everybody to be their own censor. We're grown-ups, we can make decisions like this…

Not trying to be snarky but there are I believe more than enough stores happy to sell you whatever you want, even though eBay won't allow these books to be listed. I'm confused as to how eBay banning the listing of these books materially impacts people from getting them.

The publisher is ceasing publishing them, so people started trying to buy them on eBay. The avenues to legal but these books are disappearing.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#660
post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Germany here, we banned Mein Kampf from being sold (used copyright law to do that). For me, the original "Mein Kampf" was a rather boring book to read. Since 2016, it is possible to buy a commented version of this book. It's available with the ISBN 9783981405231 for 59 € in Germany.

I really wanna buy that to see what exactly Mister A.H. had in his mind. I just wonder if me ordering it puts me on some sort of blacklist... (half /s)

[deleted]
Post reply on HN